Labyrinth: Mass Effect 2
by KDlalala
Summary: There's nothing straight about the path she has to take. It's one long, endlessly twisting road to the center of the dark...and back again. Rated M for language, violence, and adult content.
1. Prologue

**AN:** The world and its characters (except for mine) belong to Bioware.

* * *

**2183 CE**

Shepard, in Liara T'Soni's opinion, would have been bored to tears at her own memorial.

It didn't really count as a funeral since there was no body but Udina and other high ranking Alliance members had put together this memorial to give people a sense of closure. Or something like that.

She hoped it was giving some to the humans who had shown up because it wasn't doing anything for her. Wrex's words when she'd asked him if he was coming kept echoing in her mind: _I don't need Udina, of all people, to stand there and tell me what was good about Shepard. I'm not dishonoring her memory by going to something that represents everything she wasn't. _

Liara closed her eyes as Councilor Udina spoke solemnly over the small shrine they had set up, speaking of Shepard and how she stood as a symbol for all humanity. She had to give him credit for finding a nice spot on the Presidium for the memorial service and making certain Shepard got proper honors. She would have been more impressed if she honestly believed he was doing it to honor Shepard's memory rather than making himself look good.

Still, for all the people that had showed up simply for the sake of putting on a show, there were more who had shown up to honor the commander. Louis Shepard, her uncle, had shown up, though his face was void of any expression. Neither of her cousins, Raymond and Mischa, were there but that wasn't a surprise. They had both decried Udina as a hypocrite and stated they would honor their cousin in a way she would have wanted. Janine Shepard, their mother, and Louis's first wife, had not said anything publically, but her club had been closed for several days, which was a sign enough of both her and Mischa's grief.

Tali'Zorah wasn't there. Liara had tried to get a message to her in time but they had both known she probably wouldn't make it. She imagined the quarian had her own way of honoring Shepard's memory. But Garrus Vakarian was also conspicuously absent and that _did _surprise and disappoint Liara. He was back on the Citadel, had gone back to C-sec while his Spectre training was going on, he had no excuse for not being there except he was particularly angry with Udina. He would have been willing to overlook them not making a big public deal about the Reapers, but it was becoming more and more obvious both Alliance and Citadel officials were trying to brush off Shepard's warnings about the rest of Sovereign's brethren and the threat they posed.

Captain...no, he was an Admiral now...Anderson stood off to Udina's side, not looking at the ambassador, his stance straight and proud, his eyes focused straight ahead without seeing anything. Like Wrex, Anderson didn't need Udina to tell him anything about Shepard. The admiral was one of her staunchest allies and a man Shepard had admired and held the utmost respect for. Almost everyone from the Normandy was here as well. Dr. Chakwas and Engineer Adams, and the surviving members of the rest of the crew. Kaidan Alenko was giving Udina the kind of cynical apprisal they were probably all feeling. Jeff 'Joker' Moreau, the Normandy's pilot, was slumped beside him, barely paying Udina any heed, lost in his own thoughts. Liara wished there was something she could do to comfort him, understood perfectly the guilt that ate at him. Shepard had sent her into one of the escape pods before going back to get Joker. She'd barely managed to get him into one of the last escape pods before the blow that had destroyed the Normandy completely had thrown her into space.

A suit malfunction, that's what they said it had to be. The general opinion was she had never had a chance once she'd gotten away from the Normandy. Most likely she was dead and her body destroyed from being pulled into the atmosphere of the planet below.

She had seen the questions in Kaidan's eyes, the same ones that echoed in her own. If one of them had gone back with her to get Joker, would they have been able to help her? It haunted her. Neither one of them had ever disobeyed a direct order from the commander before, but if they had that one time, would it have saved her?

She didn't know. Would never know. All she knew was one of the galaxy's brightest lights had been extinguished and would not be there to fight off the coming darkness. Liara closed her eyes again, her heart clenching painfully in fear and despair.

She'd lost track of whatever it was Udina intoning, his voice fading into little more than a drone in the background of her thoughts. She jolted when that drone was abruptly cut off with the loud smashing of glass as someone threw a bottle at the podium Udina was standing at and a voice snarled, "Bastard!"

Liara turned in her seat and her heart clenched painfully at the sight of Sargent Howard Kell, the Normandy's requisitions officer and one of its engineers, standing in the middle of the walkway leading up to the podium, swaying on his feet. No one had seen him since the escape pods had been rescued. He had just disappeared off the grid.

He looked awful. His shaggy hair was a mess and stubble covered his homely face. He wore one of the colorful shirts he was fond of when he was off duty but it was covered in stains and was open in the front, revealing a dirty white shirt beneath. He glared at the ambassador with bleary eyes, ignoring the guards stepping forward. Admiral Anderson motioned them back and moved down the aisle toward him. "Sargent Kell..."

Liara also rose to her feet as Howard pointed past Anderson to the ambassador. "Bastard. Standin' there like he knew her at all...like he didn' turn on her the second he coulda..."

"Howard, you're drunk..."

"Ya damned right I am." Howard swallowed visibly, his voice wavering. "Him 'n the rest of 'em are all talkin' about what a hero she was then turning around and stabbing her in the back. Were doin' it even before she died."

"Howard."

"An' you _let 'em_, Anderson! This," he made a flailing gesture all around him, "is a joke."

Liara reached them, then. She placed a hand on Howard's elbow and he swung his head to look at her. He had to stare for a few moments before recognition set in. "Liara...you know what I'm talkin' about."

She didn't see any reason to lie. "Yes."

"You heard 'em. Said she was disturbed...obsessed...that the beacon damaged her brain...paranoid. 'Too much stress from the trauma from Mindoir and Akuze', they said. 'The pressure of all of it was a little much for her', they said."

"Come on, Howard." Liara started to guide him back down the aisle, giving Anderson a nod, who returned to the front, ordering the guards to return to their positions.

Howard resisted at first, but eventually walked unsteadily with her, letting her hold him up. He paused at the entrance to glare back at Udina, eyes that suddenly weren't all that bleary sweeping across the room and the people in it, drawing himself up. "I'll tell you 'bout the real Arian Shepard. She was brilliant and courageous. She was single handedly the most stubborn, exasperating person I've ever met and she was born to raise hell. She was one of the Alliance's most versatile fighters and one of its greatest assets, which drove certain members of it absolutely insane. She could be the most ruthless bitch you ever met and had the most heart I've ever seen in anyone. She was fast and full of grace; she could be shallow and childish and sometimes it seemed like it was only pure bedamned luck that got any of us out alive from the kinds of situations we got dragged into alongside her. All that was her. That was my baby girl. And now she's dead and the universe is a darker place 'cause of it. And it's gonna get darker, no matter what these idiots try to tell you." He turned away, shoulders slumping. "You'll know she was right...that we all were...eventually. 'Course it'll be too late then."

There was no answer. Udina stood at the podium, face stony, and said nothing. Perhaps he knew even then that nothing he'd said that day would be remembered. It was the words of an old drunken engineer that history would remember best.

Howard let out a bitter laugh and stumbled out.

* * *

Very few people knew where Shepard's apartment on the Citadel was. She had made sure of it. It was a tiny, out of the way place on the Wards. Some people might have been surprised that she hadn't tried for a place on the Presidium but Liara, who had known her better than most, couldn't imagine Shepard living comfortably within all that carefully maintained tranquility. This section of the Wards- noisy and filled with cheap bars and tiny cafes with musicians playing on corners, vendors hawking from makeshift stalls, and preachers of every species and philosophy standing in squares and small parks lambasting passerby -suited Shepard much better.

Liara had only been there once or twice but Howard obviously knew his way well. He walked with unsteady determination through the crowds. Liara, worried Udina had sent C-sec or someone after him, followed, her heart aching for him. It was no secret that Howard's feelings for Arian Shepard ran deeper than subordinate to commander or even friendship. He'd been with her since her early days in the Alliance after she'd come out of the academy. She was an N7 marine, graduating from the Alliance's most brutal training program. A program so tough, Liara had learned, that even if a soldier dropped out of it, the mere fact he'd gotten into the program in the first place gave one a certain level of respect. But she was also a woman with a criminal background and a hard past. If she hadn't been a biotic, it was unlikely she would have gotten in at all, much less into the N program. As it was, she'd been shuffled off to the Attican Traverse to help protect colonies and improve relations between them and the Alliance. Howard had already been working the Traverse for years before he took Shepard under his wing, giving her guidance and advice even after she'd surpassed him in rank. They had worked almost non-stop together through those years up until they'd both joined the Normandy. He'd lost his own son during the brutal siege on Torfan and, though he'd never said it out loud until today, it was clear to anyone who spent more than five minutes around the two that Howard loved her like a daughter.

And now he had lost her, just like his first child.

Howard stumbled as he neared Shepard's apartment building and Liara stiffened as a tall figure in C-sec blue caught him by the elbow. Howard growled low in his throat and started to shake it off and paused, peering up. "Oh...Garrus."

Liara relaxed as she recognized the turian. "Garrus. I was afraid someone had sent C-sec after him..."

"They did," Garrus Vakarian said quietly. "Someone remembered seeing Howard on the vids and let me know. I convinced the Executor to let me take care of it." A bitter edge came to his voice. "He's very magnanimous toward Shepard now that she's dead."

Howard seemed to be sobering up a little, not swaying on his feet as much. "Didn't see you at the memorial, Garrus."

The turian met his gaze. "It's a joke."

Howard snorted out a laugh. "Wanna see her apartment. Think her uncle's going to take care of it soon but he said I could go in...just...just to see her one more time."

Neither Garrus or Liara had an answer for that, but they followed him. Liara studied Garrus out of the corner of her eye, trying to pinpoint exactly what was bothering her about him. Garrus was never easy to read and he was generally calm and composed, but there was something especially closed and guarded about his expression. However Shepard's death had affected him...and she refused to believe it had not...he was keeping it private.

Howard made his way down the corridor of the building to the back of the second floor. Mr. Shepard must have indeed made some arrangement for Howard because the voice recognition system on the door let him in.

It was tiny, a single room with a kitchen and bathroom, a screen on the wall, a tall locker, a desk and chair, and a bed that folded into a couch at the push of a button. All of it from the pillows to the decorations on the walls to the drapes on the windows were decked out in deep, rich colors. Sapphire blues and ruby reds, emerald greens and dull golds. On the Normandy, Shepard had worn clothing that echoed the Alliance's uniforms, blues and browns and grays, but off duty she had loved color.

The bed was folded up and it and the desk were piled up with datapads, sketchpads, and various drawing and writing tools. Howard wandered to the desk, letting his fingers run over the small collection of paper books that had been one of the only real indulgences Shepard had. They were books of poetry, mostly, with a few novels in the mix. Hanging on the wall above the desk was a circle of stone beads with a polished stone crucifix pendant. Rosary beads, Shepard had called them. Seeing it for the first time had surprised Liara, since Shepard wasn't religious, until she had explained the beads had belonged to her grandmother and her uncle had given them to her. They were passed down from mother to daughter and should have gone to her mother, so Louis had kept tradition and insisted she have it. While she didn't follow the religious aspect of the symbol, that didn't mean she couldn't honor her grandmother's memory.

Liara's gaze was drawn from Howard to the wall opposite the desk, a short length of corridor leading to the bathroom. Garrus was standing there, studying the drawings that covered it. There were many more drawings there now than there had been the last time she'd been here and it chilled her, wondering if Shepard's nightmares from the Prothean beacon had started up again. Apparently, they had. The wall was papered with drawings taken straight out of Shepard's visions. Liara, who had seen the vision herself, had a hard time looking at them for more than a few minutes. She could only guess what Garrus was thinking as he looked at them. She'd spotted a bottle of turian brandy on the counter of the kitchen amongst the other liquor bottles and wondered how many times Garrus had seen the drawings. There was no getting used to it: every single one was a carefully rendered scene of slaughter. Dim figures died, reaching out pleading hands toward an enemy that had no mercy, cities burned in stark black and white, and figures that reminded her eerily of the husk creatures they had battled capered amongst the dying. The only drawing that wasn't a scene of death from the Protheans' desperate attempt at warning their surviving people about the Reapers was the most simple of the lot. Shepard had drawn it over and over and over with an obsessiveness that frightened Liara. It was a black figure silhouetted against a white circle, a simplified but somehow equally chilling version of one of the most clear images in the vision. A Reaper rising above a burning planet.

"She lived with these images in her head," Garrus said quietly. "She and Saren both."

Liara nodded.

"What do we do, Liara?" Garrus asked suddenly, turning his head to look at her. "You saw all of this, too. What can we do?" His voice was hoarse and for an instant she saw an echo of grief in his eyes. And knowledge of what was coming.

She had no answer for him. Intellectually, she knew all that Shepard did about the Reapers and the death they would eventually bring, but she didn't know if she could fight as fiercely as her dear friend would. She would have to try. They couldn't just lay back and let the Reapers take them, even if no one else in the galaxy would admit they existed. "Try to prepare," she said finally. Like they could ever be ready.

Garrus stared at one of the Reaper drawings without replying.

"Better to fight and lose than not fight at all." Howard's tired voice came from behind them, startling Liara. She turned to look at him and he shrugged. "It's what she would've wanted us to do."

They stood in silence for a moment. Liara suddenly found it hard to breathe. She turned and strode out the door, unable to stand that wall of drawings and the space around it anymore. She emerged out onto the street, taking a deep breath as she struggled to calm herself. By the time Garrus and Howard emerged, she nearly had herself back under control. Garrus looked at her in concern and she nodded to assure him she was all right. Howard seemed to have collapsed into himself, his wide, bulky frame seemed smaller. Garrus laid a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Howard, I'll walk you back to your hotel."

"Howard. Garrus." Liara reached out a hand to stall them.

Howard didn't look up but Garrus glanced at her over his shoulder.

She felt she had to say something, anything to lighten the heavy, bleak pall that had suddenly settled over all of them. "We'll find some way to stop them. We will."

Garrus looked away. "Goodbye, Liara."

Something about the way he said it made her wonder if she would ever see him again, and there was a coldness there that, while not directed at her, worried her. She watched them disappear down the street, only stirring when her personal comm beeped, indicating she had a message. She frowned as she looked at it, not recognizing the sender. "Hello?"

"Liara T'Soni?" She didn't recognize the voice either.

"Yes? Who is this?"

"I have some important information for you regarding Commander Shepard."

Her heart skipped a beat. "What kind of information?"

"More specifically, we have some information about the commander's body."


	2. A Spark in the Darkness

Life without meaning

cannot be borne.

We find a mission

to which we're sworn

- or answer the call

of Death's dark horn.

Without a gleaning

of purpose in life,

we have no vision,

we live in strife,

- or let blood fall

on a suicide knife.

-Dean Koontz, "_The Book of Counted Sorrows_"

* * *

**2184 CE**

* * *

_Mirette Shepard would have called it Self. A tiny pinprick of light in the darkness. Held in suspension like a firefly trapped within cupped hands._

* * *

"I'll warn you again that this isn't a pleasant sight. Tissue regeneration is only at about 40% and only a small portion of that is skin." The man who called himself Wilson stood at a blanked out window, turning to study the two people behind him.

"I'm not believing anything until I see her with my own eyes," Karin Chakwas said coolly. "You can throw DNA comparisons and reports at me all day, but I'm not making any promises until I see her and know for sure."

Wilson shrugged and turned back to the window. The Illusive Man _really _wanted these two brought into the fold now that whatever Miranda was coming up with appeared to be working. There was brain activity. Not much but it was there. He cleared the window so the room beyond came into view. They couldn't go into it, of course. As she was, it would only take a cough at the wrong time to put the fragile shell of a woman within into mortal danger.

Behind him, Jeff Moreau made a gagging sound. Wilson couldn't blame him there. The room beyond was sealed and sterilized around a tube holding Shepard in suspension. Even with all the space and glass between them, the woman was a horrifying sight. Some of her face was visible but for the most part, she was a living, pulsing anatomical figure; all red, bloody flesh and scraps of skin. Some of the charred bone hadn't fully regrown yet either and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Chakwas taking all of that in with a shrewd gaze.

"_That's_ Shepard?" Moreau said in a choked voice.

Chakwas turned her head toward Wilson slowly, her expression still suspicious, but there was a glitter in her eyes now.

Wilson pressed the comm button and spoke to one of the white suited figures within. "Will you turn her a bit, please?" He let go of the button and looked back at them. "Like I said, there's only some skin. Most of it on her back where it was protected for some reason." He looked pointedly in the room.

The tech had turned the body slightly so they could look at it from the back. Most of the skin from the shoulders down had survived and he'd taken pains to keep it that way, because it preserved the only one of Shepard's tattoos to fully survive.

Chakwas had seen it before. So had Moreau. A wide circle on her back that held a twisting, complicated pattern of a labyrinth. It was a masterpiece and Wilson admitted that practicality had only played a small part in his determination to preserve it.

Jeff Moreau stared for a long time, then spoke quietly: "I'm in."

Chakwas nodded.

* * *

_Gradually, that pinprick started to grow bigger, no longer suspended between but drawn back slowly, bit by bit._

* * *

Liara T'Soni sat quietly at her desk in her new office on Illium, staring down at the object set in front of her. Her mind kept wandering today, a sense of melancholy pervading her thoughts. She kept thinking of two people out there beyond her reach, both important to her. One captured, one caught between life and death. One giving himself up so she could take the other away.

_Feron..._

She laid her hand on the keyboard of her console, studying that small, precious cache of information she had managed to gather. So pitifully small even for all her searching. Her other hand rested over the deck of ragged cards...tarot cards, they were called...wrapped in a torn silk scarf. A legacy passed on by one brave, troubled woman to her precious daughter. She pulled the card she had deliberately set at the top of the deck out and studied it. The Queen of Cups.

_I'll find you, Feron, _she thought silently. _And maybe by then, I'll have Shepard back to help me._

* * *

_At some point, awareness came. Not thoughts, exactly, but now the darkness was receding and the spark became a corridor, leading inexorably back...back..._

* * *

James Butler took a final drag from his cigarette and then dropped it to the ground, careful that it landed somewhere dry before grinding it with his boot. Drop so much as a spark into a puddle on Omega and you could end up with a bonfire.

The young man at his feet stirred and Butler nudged him in warning. "Stay down, kid."

The kid glared up at him. "You're stealing my stuff."

"Consider it payment for making sure no one bothers you," Butler said coolly, unmoved by the accusatory note in the kid's tone. He and his gang of buddies had been roaming the neighborhoods and pulling a protection racket, thinking if they kept to the slums they would steer clear of he worst of the big gangs. "Or maybe just payment for not killing you. This here, kid? _This _is protecting people. And we don't charge anything for it."

The kid shifted and Butler kicked him again, harder this time. "Kept 'em safe, didn't we?" He sounded sulky as he watched Garrus, Sidonis, and Monteague going though the stash of money and stolen valuables the gang had extorted from people. Weaver had grown up in that neighborhood, so he was helping identify things like jewelry and knick knacks and such that were obviously special. They'd return them from the people they had been taken from if they could.

The kid muttered something, but Butler caught a glitter of fear as he looked away. The kid and his friends were outmatched on a serious level and they knew it. They had a chance of walking away from this with a lesson about taking advantage of people if they didn't cause trouble, but one toe out of line and he and his friends were dead. And no one would care.

That was life on Omega.

Butler glanced back over to his own team in time to see Garrus go completely still. He just froze in place, so suddenly Butler looked around to make sure there wasn't some kind of ambush. But no, Garrus wasn't rising to his feet. He was still kneeling beside the pile, holding up some kind of necklace up to the dim light, staring at it.

"Archangel?" Weaver tapped him on the shoulder, looking concerned.

The turian rose without answering, turning to face Butler and the kid, who went still. Butler didn't blame him. Garrus could be scary as hell when he was pissed off, but the look on his face now was something he'd never seen before. He'd learned how to read turians as a matter of necessity and he knew Garrus' moods easily by now. There was anger there, yes, but it was...raw...mixed with something very much like pain. Butler took a step back as Garrus walked up slowly and crouched in front of the kid. He held the necklace out- it was some kind of amulet or something on a thick silver chain, Butler saw now -the chain wrapped around his thumb and main finger. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and measured, but there was a rumble beneath it that had every single one of them on alert. "Where did you get this?"

The kid licked his lips, his wide eyes flickering to the necklace. "I don't know every piece we..."

Garrus moved so fast Butler didn't even see it, his free hand seizing the kid by the hair and yanking his head back viciously. _"Where did you get this?"_

The kid squealed in pain. "I don't know!"

"Archangel, what the hell?" Butler said, worried now. He'd never seen Garrus so angry before.

Garrus held the necklace up and Butler took a close look at it. Not an amulet, a medal, he saw. "St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes," Garrus said in a low voice. He flipped it over so Butler could see an engraving on the other side: _To our wild child._

He was still confused as hell until Garrus said: "This was hers."

Butler stared at him in shock for a moment and the others went still. There was only one 'her' that could get that kind of response out of Garrus. "That was _Shepard's_?"

"Commander Shepard? How in the hell did a little nothing punk like that get a hold of something that belonged to her?" Monteague exclaimed.

"I would very much like to know the answer to that question," Garrus said, his eyes never leaving the kid, who was sheet white by now.

"I didn't really think it was hers, I swear!" He gestured frantically toward the safe where they had gotten it from. "All that stuff we took off this crazy old guy that sometimes paid us to find junk for him. Special junk, like from famous people. His house was filled with it. Scraps of clothing from famous movie stars, guns from famous people, stuff like that. So...so one day he says he wants this deck of cards that belonged to Commander Shepard and we told him that was nuts 'cause no one ever found her body and he started laughing and pulled that necklace out and said he didn't know what happened to the body but there were people auctioning off some of her stuff they found in the wreck of her ship, and this was one of it. We broke in and stole some of the most valuable stuff. I didn't think it _really _belonged to Shepard! His house was packed with all sorts of stuff and half of it couldn't have really belonged to someone famous. I thought he was faking it!"

Garrus rose to his feet again and backed away, composing himself.

"I think I know who he's talking about. You want to go after him, Archangel?" Weaver asked.

In control once again, Garrus shook his head. "Later, maybe. Let's get this finished up first."

The kid watched him for a moment, uncertain, before slumping down with relief he was still alive.

They got back to work, a bit more subdued than before. None of them missed the fact Garrus had the St. Jude medal wrapped around his hand now and there wasn't a doubt the old man, whoever he was, was never going to get that particular piece back.

* * *

_After awareness came memory, a seething mess of disjointed images, the smell of burning, the ripping sounds of explosions, a monster rising above a burning planet, face after face after face and voice after voice after voice..._

* * *

"There. On the monitor. Something's wrong."

_Light. Sensation._

"She's reacting to outside stimuli. Showing awareness of her surroundings."

_She. She was a she. Her. Female. Human. She could feel her skin now, cold metal against it, the dark retreating. Shapes formed in front...above...her._

"Oh my God, Miranda. She's _waking up_!"

_There was a shape not far from her eyes, held still right in her line of vision. It was a hand. _Her _hand. Even as she thought it, it twitched a bit. _

"Damn it, Wilson! She's not ready yet! Give her the sedative!"

_But that couldn't be her hand. Her hand had skin. She could distinctly remember this. Remember looking at her hand and not being able to see the muscles pull on the bones. On the heels of that thought came pain and she gasped. A woman's face appeared in her vision. _

"Shepard! Don't move. Just lie still. Try to stay calm."

_As her brain registered the pain from her hand, it started picking up on the pain radiating through the rest of her. Not just an ache, but alarming, terrifying pain. The kind of pain that came from a serious wound. All over her. _

"Heart rate is still climbing. Her brain activity is off the charts!"

_She couldn't take her eyes off that horrible, flayed hand. She tried to scream but her voice didn't seem to work._

"Stats pushing into the red zone. It's not working!"

_Everything wavered as shadows washed across her vision, making panic spike through her. She was dying. Had to be. She didn't want to die._

"Another dose, now!"

_Something terrible had happened and if she died, what would happen to...she saw faces but couldn't match names through her struggle to breathe and push the shadows back. It didn't work. The darkness closed in on her, swallowing her, choking her cry of despair._

"Heart rate is dropping. Stats falling into normal range. That was close, we almost lost her."

"I told you the estimates were off. Run the numbers again."

_Awareness faded to nothing more than a spark in the darkness again._


	3. System Shock

**2185 CE**

**Lazarus Research Station**

**Unknown Galaxy**

"Miranda wanted me to run a quick test on the surveill ...what the hell are you doing?" Jacob Taylor stopped the doorway of the main medlab, blinking at Wilson.

It was a valid question. Wilson was standing over the still, unconscious form of Commander Shepard, lying face down on the slab, her back bare to the waist. Wilson, however, didn't look the least bit perturbed by the interruption. "Fixing her tattoo."

Jacob came up to the table, seeing the small machine that had been hidden by Wilson's body. A tube led from it to the instrument in Wilson's hand. Wilson bent back to his task. "I worked my way through med school working at a tattoo parlor. This section of her back was left mostly intact, so enough of the tattoo was left for me to make it whole again. It's really a beauty. I wonder who did it."

Jacob squinted at the elaborate design. "She's got a maze on her back."

"Labyrinth, the design is called," Wilson corrected. "Only one path, see?" He traced his finger above the design, following the path that led to the middle. There was indeed only one, twisting and turning into itself, forming a symmetrical pattern within the circle. Done in stark black lines, the design was simple and elaborate all at once. "I saw a few designs for it when I was working. It's a meditation thing, someone told me. Follow the path to the middle and back again. Now why she has one on her back, I have no idea."

"I never met Shepard, but from I've seen on the vids, she didn't strike me as the meditative type," Jacob agreed, leaning forward a bit to get a closer look at the design in the very center, which Wilson was finishing up. The final opening that led into the center, instead of just ending, had lines drawn from it, twisting around throughout the small center circle and forming a three pointed design made to look like a ribbon folding into itself with an eye design set right in the center. If you traced it, it led right back to the entrance and out into the labyrinth design again. "Pretty cool. Miranda is going to be pissed."

"Probably." Wilson didn't sound terribly concerned, leaning back to study his work and nodding in satisfaction. He turned to shut the machine down and detach the needles. "It won't interfere with anything they're doing to get her muscles working properly again. Her body is working just fine, it's just a matter of seeing if they can get her mind back into shape."

"Miranda thinks she can."

"Yeah." There was an odd, resentful note in Wilson's voice. "I know."

* * *

_One month later_

"We've done everything we can to get the muscles in top shape, but it simply can't compare to her actually working with them. She'll have to exercise regularly in order to regain her strength," Miranda's assistant said.

"If everything goes right, and preliminary tests make me hopeful they are, she should still maintain all her memory and training, so I don't think it will be a problem," Miranda said with a rare half smile, satisfied.

"The next round of tests should..." The assistant trailed off, blinking, as warning klaxons suddenly blared to life, startling everyone.

Annoyed, Miranda went to the small communication center in the corner of the lab. "What the hell..."

"Security is on full alert but there's something strange..." One of the other assistants was cut off as a security mech suddenly bashed in through the door. His voice raised into a scream that was cut off as the mech opened fire. Miranda ducked down behind a table, moving automatically and rolling to a better position. Even as the mech finished off the rest of the assistants, she rose from behind the table, throwing her hand forward in a sharp, vicious gesture. The mech paused, buzzing, as her biotics closed around it, sparks flying as its casing started to crunch. Its head exploded and it slumped to the ground. Miranda took a moment to steady herself, taking stock of the situation. She sealed the door as best she could to buy her some time and did a quick search of the facility. Something...someone...had turned the mechs hostile. Calm blue eyes narrowed as she took in the sight of the mechs hunting people down before she turned her attention to the one person there she needed to make absolute certain didn't die. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the room was still sealed and protected. She hesitated, going over her options. She came to the reluctant conclusion that she had no choice, there was only one option. She brought up a series of commands, powering up the machinery in the room on the screen while she still could. Her finger hovered over the execute button for a single moment before she pushed it.

* * *

Jacob ran headlong through the facility's corridors, trying to drown out the screams of people who had gotten trapped in with the mechs without a way to escape.

The entire facility had gone to hell. Before he'd lost contact with the rest of the security team, they had reported that any attempts to override the system and take the security mechs offline or bring them back under control had been met with utter failure. He gathered that hadn't changed since the mechs were still ripping the facility apart.

He took down a mech blocking the door ahead and dove through onto a bridge connecting one section of the facility to another, sealing the door behind him before attempting to raise Miranda...or anyone really...on his comm. He got nothing but static at first, but he thought he caught a faint voice when he tuned into channels from the immediate vicinity. Before he could try and make it clearer, he heard a door open across the way to another bridge on the other side and cursed as more mechs came in, opening fire on him. He dove for cover, counseling himself for patience since they couldn't get across to him yet, drawing on every ounce of Alliance training he had.

Something hit the door to the bridge he'd just sealed with a heavy thump. He glanced back, judging he had a while before whatever it was managed to break through and forced himself to focus on the mechs still shooting at him. He angled himself so his back wasn't to the door anymore, listening with half an ear as the thumping stopped. He had a moment to hope whatever it was had given up and the door was suddenly blasted open from within. Jacob put his back to the wall, pistol up and pointed as he moved to face the new enemy without exposing himself to the mechs on the other bridge. He sighted down the barrel...and froze.

The figure standing in the doorway wasn't a mech. It was a dead woman.

For a moment, Jacob could only gape. "S-Shepard?" he finally blurted. "What the hell?"

It was her pale hair and those gray eyes of hers that tipped him off. Otherwise he might have shot her on reflex because she looked like something that had just crawled out of a crack straight to hell. Granted, she actually resembled a human being now, but only just barely.

Her eyes flicked from him to the mechs still shooting from the other bridge. She was dressed in light armor and carried a pistol, raising it slowly, her hand trembling, which he supposed was understandable. He stirred, shaking his thoughts off, and turned to join her in picking the mechs off. Her aim was off, he noted with absent professionalism, though it got better the more she shot. When there were only two mechs left, dark energy shimmered around her suddenly and she lashed out with one hand, throwing one of them hard into the other and sending them both crashing into the wall. Jacob shot them as they fell to be sure they stayed down, eying Shepard warily.

He was not reassured by a closer look at her. There was a chilling blankness in her eyes that made him think her brain wasn't quite working and the way she kept looking around and jumping at the slightest sound made him nervous as hell. It reminded him of a wild animal ready to bite anything that moved near it. "What are you doing here?" he asked, keeping his voice calm and measured. "I thought you were still a work in progress."

She looked at him with clear confusion, the first real expression that had crossed her face. "I..what? I just woke up..."

Shit. Obviously Miranda had woken her up early, how the hell was she supposed to know anything? "Right. Sorry about that. I'm Jacob Taylor...I've been stationed here for..."

"Hostiles detected." The voice echoed across the room. Either the mechs had just come in or they had missed it.

"Damn it!" Jacob whirled up and took one of them down. He turned back to Shepard as he dropped back down to a crouch. "Things must be worse than I thought if Miranda's got you running around."

He saw a flicker of expression cross her face at Miranda's name, which gave him some hope. Talking to her seemed to be helping. That blankness was fading from her eyes and he saw a glint of calm focus the soldier in him recognized. He glanced over his shoulder. "I'll fill you in, but we better get you to the shuttle first."

A shot hit the other side of the barrier and her expression shifted into annoyance. She spun, eyes narrowed, and used another biotic attack to take down the other mechs. Since saving bullets seemed a good idea to him, he used his own biotics to help her finish them off. She seemed more steady with biotics than she did with her gun. He wasn't sure if that made him feel any safer. Anyone else, it wouldn't have worried him, but this was Arian Shepard they were talking about. The woman was an N7 marine who had slaughtered things the galaxy had never seen before. He was careful his thoughts didn't show on his face. When she looked at him, he nodded toward the door. "Ready to get the hell off this station?"

She was touching her cheek, her expression confused and troubled. When she turned her head slightly, he could catch the glow of cybernetics through a still healing wound on her cheek. "I was hurt..."

That was such a complete understatement, Jacob couldn't even fathom a reply at first. He finally said, "I'm not a doctor, but you were pretty bad. When I first saw you, you were nothing but meat and tubes. Anywhere else, they would have put you in a coffin. But Project Lazarus was different. Cutting edge technology."

Shepard still wasn't looking at him, but her eyes went wide. "I died."

"Or close to it...that was the project's purpose. To bring you back. Two years, all the top scientists, the best technology money could buy."

"I _died_..."

Jacob actually wished she would sound hysterical, just so he could figure out what the hell she was going to do or what she was feeling. He had no idea how to translate that quiet voice and her face remained strangely blank, like she couldn't remember how to make an expression. Shepard turned away from him for a moment, breathing deeply, clearly trying to calm herself. After a few minutes, she turned back and this time the blankness in her face was deliberate, her expression hard. Whatever she was feeling, she had locked it away for the moment. "What's the quickest way to the shuttles?" Her voice was steady.

He breathed out a silent prayer of thanks. This he could deal with. "Depends on where the mechs are thickest. It's probably best if we-"

"_Check. Check. Anyone on this frequency? Anybody still alive out there? Hello?"_

That was Wilson's voice. Hurriedly, Jacob clicked his comm on. "Wilson? This is Jacob. I'm here with Commander Shepard. Just took out a wave of mechs over in D wing."

"_Shepard's alive?" _Wilson sounded shocked. _"How in the hell...never mind. You need to get her out of there. Get to the service tunnels and head for the network control room."_

"Roger that, Wilson. Stay on this frequency." Jacob turned back to Shepard and was startled to find her staring at him with narrowed eyes. Before he could ask what was wrong, she said thoughtfully, "He's a scientist."

"He's the medical director. He was one of the ones in charge."

"I heard him. In audio diaries back there." She gestured back. "And I saw him..." The troubled look on her face was back, though she smoothed it out a few moments later. "Service tunnels?"

"We can get there through this door."

He led the way, keeping an eye on her out of the corner of his eye. The service tunnels were crawling with mechs, a fact he reported to a defensive Wilson. He almost regretted that when the came out the other side of the tunnel and Wilson's panicky voice came over the comm, calling for help before a gunshot sounded and he cried out in pain. Jacob charged up the stairs, aiming for Server Room B where Wilson had said he was. There were more mechs waiting for them and bodies scattered across the floor. Jacob let the sight give him something to focus his anger. Shepard seemed more steady now, and her aim much better than it had been.

The last mech in the corridor collapsed in a shower of sparks and Jacob took a moment to catch his breath, trying to raise Wilson on the comm again.

"_Physical reconstruction of the subject is complete."_

He had a moment of utter confusion as he heard Miranda's voice. It wasn't coming from his comm. He realized Shepard had wandered over to a console and Miranda's face and voice were playing on it. _"We still need to evaluate all mental and neurological functions. Our orders were clear: make Commander Shepard who she was before the explosion- the same mind, the same morals, the same personality."_

The poor woman. Jacob wasn't made of stone. He could only imagine what had to be going on in Shepard's head, hearing all these reports about bringing her back after losing two years of her life. "Shepard."

She looked at him expressionlessly. He motioned to the door and she nodded, shutting the console off and moving to join him.

* * *

Wilson was alive. Even as Jacob crouched to take a look at his leg, Wilson's eyes moved to Shepard, watching her with a kind of wary awe. He must have felt like Dr. Frankenstein watching his creation walking around for the first time. Jacob winced at that thought and made a note not to say it out loud when Shepard was within hearing range. The wound was a graze. A bad one, but there was nothing lodged in him. He lifted his head as someone stepped up to his other side and looked up to see Shepard holding a tube of medi-gel out to him. He took it, nodding in thanks, and smoothed it over the wound while Wilson gritted his teeth. Shepard wandered away and came back with bandages this time, binding the wound up. Jacob helped Wilson climb slowly to his feet. "Thanks, Shepard. Never thought you'd save my life. Guess that makes us even now."

Wilson started to say more but cut himself off when he saw the look on Shepard's face. She was studying him intently with that fixed, narrow eyed stare again. It made Jacob feel jumpy and he wasn't even on the receiving end of it. Wilson hurried on speaking. "I thought maybe I could shut down the security mechs. But whoever did this fried the whole system. Completely irreversible."

Something about the defensive way he said it irked Jacob. "We didn't ask what you were doing." He narrowed his own eyes at Wilson as a thought occurred to him. "Why do you even have security mech clearance? You were in the bio wing."

Wilson glared at him. "Weren't you listening? I came here to try and fix this. Besides, I was shot! How do you explain that?"

"Shot," Shepard said, her eyes on his bandaged leg. "Only once."

"She's right, you're lucky they didn't smear you over the floor like everyone else," Jacob said. "Where's Miranda? We can't leave her behind."

Wilson waved an impatient hand. "Forget about Miranda. She was over in D wing. The mechs were all over that sector. There's no way she survived."

Jacob glanced at Shepard, who was still staring at Wilson's leg with an odd look on her face. She shrugged, her speech stilted as she answered his unasked question: "She woke me up. I lost contact with her not long before I met you, but that was when everything started to go on the fritz. She didn't sound like she was being attacked at the time."

"A bunch of mechs won't drop Miranda." Jacob couldn't imagine Miranda allowing herself to die in such a commonplace manner. "She's alive."

"Then where is she?" Wilson sounded exasperated and strangely angry. "Why haven't we heard from her?" He leaned forward. "There's only two possible explanations: she's either dead...or she's a traitor!"

Shepard, surprisingly, spoke up before Jacob could come up with an indignant response. "Then why bother waking me up and warning me about the attack?"

Miranda would be happy to know Shepard's higher brain functions were apparently working.

Wilson went on the defensive again. "Okay, maybe she's not a traitor. But that doesn't change the facts. We're here, she's not. We have to save ourselves. The shuttle bay is only a few..."

His words cut off with a yell as mechs burst in through a door at the other side of the room. Jacob spun, his gun coming up, but Shepard was already stepping forward, her arm raising with eerie precision, the omni-tool built into her armor blinking as she aimed it at a set of canisters against the wall. Wilson turned away as they exploded, blowing the mechs to pieces.

Wilson blinked at her for a moment. "Wow, I guess she managed to bring you back the way you were after all." He sounded a bit nervous for some reason. "Let's get out of here."

Shepard turned her head to regard him silently again, her gaze moving between him and Jacob. That look was like a kick in the gut to Jacob. Up until this point he'd assumed she was running almost purely on instinct, but that look made him wonder if she wasn't faking some of it. That couldn't go on, she was too dangerous to have at their backs, especially with Wilson hurt. It was a risk, but he decided to go with his instincts. Jacob waited until she looked at him again before speaking. "This is getting tense. Shepard, if I tell you who we work for, will you trust me?"

She started a bit, cocking her head.

Wilson looked appalled. "This really isn't the time, Jacob."

Shepard's eyes narrowed into slits this time around, fixing on Wilson with such open hostility, he actually took a step backward. Jacob raised an eyebrow at him. "We won't get far if she's expecting a shot in the back."

Wilson leaned back against a stack of crates, shaking his head. "If you want to piss off the boss, it's your ass Jacob."

He was actually more worried about Shepard's reaction, but it was too late now. "The Lazarus Project, the program that rebuilt you...it's funded and controlled by Cerberus."

_That _name got a response. No emotion she had showed so far was anywhere near as intense as the violent rage that passed across her face and eyes. Jacob was looking right at her and actually saw the exact moment she considered shooting them both. Wilson pushed away from the crates in alarm and Jacob's hand tightened on his gun. He didn't dare raise it, afraid of setting her off. He obviously didn't need to remind her she and Cerberus had a history. "According to the Alliance, we're a radical pro-human splinter group. You wiped out several of our research bases. But things change."

"The admiral."

He blinked, startled by the change from rage to grief. "What?"

"You killed Admiral Kahoku. Threw his body in with the rachni. After you fed his men to thresher maws."

"Shepard..."

"Just like...just like...Toombs. _Toombs._ _Akuze._" She _snarled_ the last word, the rage coming back, leaping from emotion to emotion like a crazed gazelle.

Wilson was back against the crates again, pressing into them like was hoping to melt through them and give him some cover. But Shepard swung away from them, pacing back and forth a few feet away, her movements violent and jerky.

Jacob forced his voice to remain calm and steady. No easy feat, he was proud of himself for managing it. "The Alliance declared you dead. They gave up. Cerberus spent a fortune to bring you back."

She stopped pacing and stared at him. "Why?" She sounded relatively calm, but that didn't make Jacob feel any better. He'd heard enough to know the quieter she got, the more danger you were in. He'd rather have her ranting at him than that cold, focused anger. He had a chance of surviving with the ranting.

"That'll take a bit more time to explain." Jacob tried to appeal to her practicality. "Look, Shepard, I'd be suspicious too. But right now, we have to work together. I thought you deserved to know what's what."

She stared at him for a minute longer, searching his face silently, absorbing that and considering it. For the first time, Jacob was absolutely certain he'd done the right thing, because she nodded slowly, accepting the reality of the situation. "Once we're off the station, I'll take you to the Illusive Man. He'll explain everything, I promise."

"The Illusive Man." Shepard seemed to be trying out the name like she was tasting it, each syllable precise.

"Not his real name, of course," Wilson said. "Nobody knows who he really is."

Jacob shrugged. "It was a code name the Alliance used for him. It kinda stuck."

"It was the guy at that third research lab that told me the name," Shepard mused, almost talking to herself. "After we killed everyone else and set everything up to blow the place to hell." She smiled in satisfaction at the memory.

Jacob and Wilson exchanged a glance.

Her smile faded. "Did the same thing with Saleon. Except we didn't blow his ship and he died..."

"Shepard," Jacob said cautiously.

"Garrus..." Shepard's voice softened. Jacob had started to pick up on a pattern with her. He wasn't any sort of expert on brain waves, but he was willing to bet these moments when her mind wandered came when her memories started to really come back to her. She stirred when he spoke and her eyes focused again. "All right."

"Ready to move?" Jacob asked.

"Yes."

"It's not much further to the shuttle bay," Wilson added. He studied Shepard as they moved out. "Commander, if your omni-tool is working, why aren't you using the tech armor?"

"The what?"

"That only came out a year ago, Wilson," Jacob reminded him.

"Oh, crap. Right, right. Hang on." He cautiously approached Shepard and pointed to her omni-tool. "It's a specialized tech. I think you can handle it."

Shepard lifted the omni-tool and studied the commands. Wilson watched her with a sharp gaze, looking pleased when she quickly picked out what command to use. What looked like a yellow hologram which was actually a specially built shield appeared over her armor. Shepard looked fascinated. "Cool..."

Jacob had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the almost child-like wonder in her voice. _And they talk about _men _and their toys._

It helped. Shepard had picked up on how Jacob fought by then, so they were able to work in a steady pattern as they made their way to the shuttle bay, using a mixture of biotics and bullets to take down the mechs in their way while Wilson backed them up. It was a long, grueling process and they both were wrung out by the time they reached the shuttle bay doors. Jacob could honestly say he'd never seen a more beautiful sight in his life. He could have kissed those sterile door panels.

Wilson hurried forward to open the door, grinning wildly. C'mon, through here. We're almost at the..."

The doors slid open and Wilson stopped mid sentence as he came face to face with Miranda Lawson.

Jacob said her name with a sigh of relief. He'd known the mechs couldn't take her down. Wilson wasn't as happy, his voice rising in pitch. "Miranda? But you were..."

Miranda calmly lifted her gun and shot him point blank in the chest. "Dead?"

Jacob let out a yelp of shock before he could stop himself. "What the hell are you doing?"

Miranda glanced down to make certain Wilson was dead, her voice calm. "My job. Wilson betrayed us all."

Shepard came up behind Jacob, looking down at Wilson's body with mild interest. Miranda studied her, looking her over carefully for a moment before turning her attention back to Jacob. "He sabotaged the security systems, killed my staff, and he would have killed us."

Jacob was struggling to believe it for the same reason he didn't believe Miranda had been a traitor: why would he put all that work into Shepard only to kill her off now? "Are you sure about that, Miranda? We've known Wilson for years. What if you're wrong?"

"I'm never wrong. I thought you'd have learned that by now, Jacob."

"The ice queen."

Both of them looked at Shepard, startled. She gazed back at them mildly, pointing at Wilson. "That's what he called you."

Miranda frowned at her for a moment. She shook her head. "Let's get to the shuttle bays and go. My boss wants to speak to you."

"The Illusive Man." Jacob once more took note of the way she said the name, with a strange sort of relish. He might have said it was admiration except for the clear note of malice in her voice.

Miranda sighed. "Ah, Jacob. I should have known your conscience would get the better of you."

"Lying to the commander isn't the way to get her to join our cause," Jacob said.

Miranda looked over at Shepard. "Well, since we're getting everything out in the open, is there anything else you'd like to ask before we go, Commander?" she asked sarcastically.

"No."

The terse answer actually seemed to startle Miranda for a moment. She recovered quickly and turned. "Then let's go."


	4. Illusive Memories

Shepard was fairly certain her head was going to explode, and wouldn't that be interesting?

She stared out at the shuttle window, taking no heed of Miranda and Jacob talking quietly at the front. She had a dim thought that she probably should be paying attention, gathering information, but she was having a hard time keeping her thoughts on one path. There really wasn't much of a point in listening in if she didn't have the brain power to put the information to any use.

Without a task to focus on or something threatening her survival, her thoughts had scattered into the same buzz of disjointed memories and thoughts that had exploded into existence from the moment the white hot shock of pain had ripped her from blackness back into consciousness. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, a jumble of pieces that formed a picture, but her brain had to put the pieces back together first- blindfolded - before she could see the whole of it. Obviously her training was coming back because she hadn't even had to think about using her biotics or her gun, the movements coming to her on instinct.

_I died._

It was getting easier to think, but everything was still such a mess...

_A path is built by setting one stone at a time, cherie. _

Her mother's favorite saying. She closed her eyes, breathing in slowly.

One stone at a time: her name was Arian Marie Shepard. Her mother was Mirette Shepard, daughter of Lianmei Rostov Shepard and Douglas Shepard, sister of Louis Shepard. She was twenty nine years old, at least officially. She was a N7 ranked marine of the Alliance, Sentinel class. She was a the first human to be accepted into the Spectres and that was an acronym but she couldn't remember what it stood for. She was...had been...the commander of the SSV Normandy.

_I died._

Which had blown up. Oh, God.

Images flashed through her head in rapid succession. She remembered helping Joker get to the escape pod and then a violent explosion that had started to tear her away. She'd only had time to shut the pod and send it off before the Normandy was torn apart.

She remembered dying.

She remembered panic clawing through her when she couldn't get air, every part of her paralyzing as blackness reached up to choke her.

She remembered a flayed hand.

She pulled her thoughts away from that desperately, mentally flailing for something to latch onto. Joker. Liara. Tali. Kaidan. Jesus, they'd all been there...

"Survivors." Her voice came out harsher than she'd intended, startling Jacob and Miranda. Cerberus. They were enemies, she didn't want to show any weakness or give away more than she could, but she had to know. "On the Normandy. Did anyone else make it?"

Jacob must have heard the plea in her voice because he hastened to reassure her. "Almost everyone did, Shepard. Most of the people who died were on the CIC deck. Pressley, I know he died...but the asari, the quarian, and Kaidan Alenko survived, I know that much. And your pilot."

She missed the glance he and Miranda shared. Pressley. Her navigator and XO. Old war hero. Worried too much. Dead. She thought she ought to feel sorrow, but her emotions seemed too numb.

"We can get you a list of the dead," Jacob offered. That was a kindness she didn't expect from him. In fact, she was hard pressed to believe Jacob was part of Cerberus. He seemed to be a genuinely nice man.

Now, Miranda, on the other hand...

"Since we're on the subject," she woman said briskly. "We should probably evaluate your condition before you meet with the Illusive Man."

Ice queen indeed. She probably should have been offended, but Miranda struck her as the exact type she had pegged for Cerberus.

"Come on, Miranda. More tests?" Jacob protested. "She took down those mechs without any trouble. That has to be good enough."

"It's been two years since the attack," Miranda said implacably. "The Illusive Man needs to know that Shepard's personality and memories are intact."

"Two years." For the first time, the reality of that sank in. She'd been dead for two years. She wasn't twenty nine, she was thirty one. She let her head fall back against the wall.

Jacob shot Miranda an angry look. "Two years and twelve days. And you were on the operating table for most of it."

But she _can't_ have been dead. They could not have brought her back if she had been dead. That was impossible. But she had been. She had no way of explaining how she _knew _that, but she did. "The Pope will be very displeased that I didn't go to hell...I think I'd remember, yes? Do you smell brimstone?"

Jacob's mouth almost quirked into a smile. "Well, there's your personality showing up, Miranda."

Miranda merely looked impatient. "The sooner we start, the sooner we can be done. Start with personal history."

Jacob sighed. "Okay. Shepard, records show you were a colony kid. Lost your parents when slavers hit Mindoir."

"Fucking batarians," Shepard growled. She could see the four eyed bastards in her mind's eye. Following that stone on the path, she ticked off all the other species she knew and was pleased they came easily. Turian, asari, quarian, salarian, krogan, elcor, volus...the tentacled ones, what were they...hanar!...drell. Rachni...Thorian...no, there was only one Thorian. Had been. It was dead now. Keepers...

_The monster above the burning planet._

_Reapers..._

She stiffened, but Jacob didn't seem to notice. "You, uh..." he hesitated. "You survived a thresher maw attack after you enlisted. Do you remember?"

"Yes." Her hand went to her left shoulder automatically. "Don't you? It was Cerberus that caused it."

"That's not true, Commander," Miranda said smoothly.

"And then you took Toombs and experimented on him for years until he killed off your scientists then killed himself," Shepard said, ignoring her, memories coming faster now. "You used the same trick on Admiral Kahoku's men and then killed him when he tried to avenge them. That's when we blew up all those research stations." She remembered Liara getting her a list and frowned. "There were a couple more I missed initially. Liara found them for me. I kept meaning to go back and get them and I never did." She supposed she wouldn't get the chance now.

Miranda's lips had thinned down to a white line, her eyes flashing. Jacob looked at her. "Satisfied, Miranda?"

"Almost," Miranda said coldly. There was a glint in her eye. "Let's try something more recent. Virmire. When you destroyed the cloning facility. You had to leave one of your squad to die in the blast."

"_You kind of have bad taste in men, Commander."_

"_No, I have a taste for bad men."_

"Ash..." she whispered.

Jacob leaned forward, nodding. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams was killed in action. It was your call. Why did you leave her behind?" He asked it as gently as that question could be asked.

Shepard pressed her fingers to her temple, squeezing her eyes shut. Her memories were coming clearer and clearer, the picture pulling together. Which was not a blessing in this case. "I thought I had time to go back for her. Kaidan was guarding the bomb, Saren's geth dropped into the courtyard. I had to make sure it went off. But I thought I would have time to go back for her. Ash...she knew...she knew she was going to die there, I could hear it in her voice." She leaned forward. "She was a good soldier," she said aggressively, needing that to be understood and not caring who was doing the understanding. "She was the _best_."

Jacob leaned back. "No one is questioning that, Commander. No one ever has."

Placated, she leaned back as well. "She gave her life for us. Without her, we wouldn't have stopped Saren. That poor bastard. She was a hero."

"I understand, Commander. I wasn't judging your decision. Everybody at Cerberus knows that cloning facility had to be destroyed."

"God forbid there be mindless alien clones out there that someone besides Cerberus controls," Shepard said without thinking. She let her head fall back against the wall again with an audible thunk, her brow furrowing. "That was another research facility. Had to destroy it, because the experiments were out of control. Those things the Thorian made. How the hell did you get those?"

Miranda ignored that. "Think back to the Citadel, after the Alliance saved the Destiny Ascension, and you killed Saren. What happened next?"

"I didn't kill Saren, he killed himself. The poor bastard," Shepard said again, staring at the ceiling. "Only he got back up again."

She had a captive audience now. Neither of them had heard this part of the story.

"He was a robot...thing. Sovereign did it to him. To indoctrinate him fully." She shuddered, the horror of that thought sweeping through her, the bone deep terror of the idea of being indoctrinated shivering through her bones. "When we killed that, they killed Sovereign."

"Interesting," Miranda murmured absently, typing something into a datapad.

Something in Shepard's brain clicked firmly into place and she straightened up. She was giving information away without a thought. Not a good idea. Miranda glanced back up at her. "I was referring to what happened after all that."

Shepard frowned. "Humanity was offered a spot on the Council. They asked me if I had a recommendation for someone..."

"Who did you pick?"

"No one?" It came out as a question, uncertainty lacing her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded more firmly. "No one. I thought it was best to leave politics to the politicians. The Alliance and Parliament chose Ambassador Udina for the spot, I think."

"They did," Jacob confirmed.

Shepard scowled. "I didn't like him."

"He wasn't too fond of you either, Commander," Jacob said, straight faced.

A reluctant smile curved her lips. "No, he wasn't."

She wanted to ask what had become of Anderson and Kaidan and the rest of her friends, but held her tongue. She would be able to find all that out without their help eventually.

"Your memory seems solid," Miranda said, sounding satisfied. "There are really other tests we should run-"

"Come on, Miranda, enough with the quizzes. The memories are there, and I can vouch for Shepard's combat skills personally."

That brought her back to the fact there was a bone deep ache all throughout her body. She grimaced. "I can't remember the last time I was this tired after a fight..."

"You're not up to physical peak, Shepard, that's only to be expected," Miranda said. "You'll need to build your muscles back up. We'll have to hope the Illusive Man accepts our little field test as evidence enough."

Shepard couldn't see herself through the armor but she could feel that her arm was a lot skinnier than normal. She didn't want to think back to the reasons why now, it made her dizzy.

She had died...and come back. "Miranda?"

"Commander?"

Apparently, she hadn't lost her sick sense of humor. "If this was the Lazarus Project and you brought me back, does that make you Jesus?"

* * *

Her lord and savior hadn't mentioned that she would not be seeing God Himself in person.

Shepard frowned a bit as she stepped into the center of a holographic transmitter. It was huge, bigger than any she'd ever seen, obviously meant to project her image into a matching one in the Illusive Man's chamber. She didn't anticipate it returning the favor threefold. She not only saw an image of the Illusive Man, she saw an image of what was either a very, very impressive fake background, or the Illusive Man actually lived above a supernova.

Since the Illusive Man was obviously putting on a show for her, she didn't disappoint him, studying him silently. He looked to be in his late 40s or early 50s, a well built man with a rigidly neat coif of silver hair and dressed in an elegant suit. He lounged, the picture of confidence, in a small chair that sat in the middle of a floor crafted of shiny black tiles, the better to reflect the violent colors that ran over the surface of the dying sun at his back. It looked ready to explode, scintillating shades of red and blue and yellow moving in restless patterns.

Even as she watched, the Illusive Man reached inside his jacket, pulling a cigarette out of a slim silver case, lighting it with an old fashioned lighter, and raising it to his mouth. All in one smooth movement. Shepard eyed the cigarette with a hint of wistfulness and nostalgia, having a sudden craving for one of the hand rolled cigarettes she'd gotten from the colonists when she had been working for the Alliance along the Attican Traverse. She'd smoked the last one the night she'd been given the Normandy and hadn't touched one since.

Against the violent colors of the supernova behind him, the Illusive Man presented a dramatic picture of power. Masterful, sophisticated, and untouchable, like he could tame that sun behind him with a single languid gesture. It should have looked overdone and way too poised, but somehow he managed to pull it off.

She might have been impressed if she could have stopped the image of him sliding around the floor in that chair, carefully setting everything up so he could be posed and ready by the time the holograph appeared.

_Do you think he practices looking stern and dignified in the mirror every morning? Like target practice, only making faces? _Garrus' voice echoed through her head out of nowhere, dryly wondering that aloud about Ambassador Udina. She had to literally bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. The Illusive Man was finally deigning to speak. "Commander Shepard."

"Illusive Man. I thought we'd be meeting face to face."

"A necessary precaution," he replied. She couldn't pick up an accent in his voice. It was as calm and carefully cultured as the rest of him. He took a drag from his cigarette. "Not unusual for people who know what you and I know." He took a drink from a shot glass sitting on the arm of his chair she hadn't noticed before, setting it down and looking straight at her. For the first time, she noticed how whacked out his eyes were. They glowed blue and seemed to be made up of concentric rings, eerily mechanical. She couldn't tell if they were real or a trick with the hologram.

She didn't like a statement that put them both together in any way and didn't bother to hide it. Every moment she spent in his presence (so to speak) had her hackles raising and she couldn't pinpoint why. Maybe it was the idea that those eyes of his could see right through her and she wasn't up to trying to fool him. As if to confirm her thoughts, he leaned back in his chair, studying her. "You need to put your personal feelings aside, Shepard."

Shepard fought hard to hide her annoyance that he could, indeed, read her so easily.

"Humanity is up against the greatest threat of our existence."

That was the one thing that could capture her full attention. "The Reapers."

"Good to see your memory is still intact. How are you feeling?" The question sounded sincere. Of course, he could sincerely be concerned his investment was feeling off.

She stirred, acknowledging the small part of her that had been hoping to meet him face to face. "I'm kind of disappointed I can't put a bullet in your brain and try and fight my way out," she answered without thinking. She really was hoping the filter in her brain that helped her learn to keep her fucking mouth shut would click on soon. On the other hand, she was being honest. She'd probably die, but she would take him out at the same time, truly avenging all the people that had suffered at Cerberus' hands. The idea of them spending so much time and money to bring her back only to gun her down was a blackly pleasing one. They'd all go out in one blaze of ridiculous pointlessness.

The Illusive Man merely nodded, not appearing surprised at all, which vexed her. He could have at least been polite enough to be annoyed by the threat. "Cerberus isn't as evil as you believe."

"_As _evil." She liked that. Evil, but not _that _evil.

The Illusive Man ignored her. Miranda must have picked some tricks up from him. "You and I are on the same side; we just have different methods."

She so wasn't going to get into this kind of battle of wits with him. She wasn't up to that kind of argument on her best day. "What are the Reapers doing?" Fear flooded through her. They couldn't be attacking yet, could they?

The Illusive Man rose to his feet. "We're at war. No one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack. While you've been sleeping, entire colonies have been disappearing. Human colonies. We believe its someone working for the Reapers. Just as Saren and the geth aided Sovereign. You've seen it yourself. You bested all of them. That's just one reason we chose you."

"What do you mean, disappearing?"

"I mean everyone gone. Men, women, children, all gone."

Shepard felt dizzy. She clenched a fist. "How do I know that for sure? I'll I've been hearing from you and your people is words, with nothing to back it up."

"I'd be disappointed if I could persuade you that easily. Go and see for yourself." The Illusive Man turned and walked back to his chair. "I have a shuttle waiting to take you to Freedom's Progress, the latest colony to be abducted. Miranda and Jacob will brief you." He settled into the chair again. "If you don't find the evidence we're both looking for, we can part ways. But first, go to Freedom's Progress. Find any clues you can. Who's abducting the colonies? Do they have any connection to the Reapers? I brought you back, it's up to you to do the rest."

"No need to get dramatic." Shepard fell silent, going over the information and considering her options. Somehow, despite the Illusive Man's gregariousness, she didn't think he would just let her walk out of here. She could get into the shuttle and possibly overpower Jacob and Miranda, then steal the shuttle and hope she got far enough to ditch it before Cerberus caught up with her. It was a stretch, though.

And then there was the little matter of the fact he might be telling the truth, which bought a sick swoop of apprehension in her stomach. She had to know. She had to know if it was true before she made any other decision. "All right."

The Illusive Man nodded again, as if expecting nothing else, and shut the hologram down.


	5. Ghost Colony

**AN: **I've had some comments about Arian's back tattoo, there's a link to a picture of it on my profile, along with a link to some (very) rough sketches I've done of her.

* * *

Miranda was standing at the console she had been working on when Shepard had first arrived at the station. She didn't look up from it as Shepard wandered up. "The Illusive Man is very impressed with you. I'm eager to see if you can live up to his expectations on this mission." She glanced up at Shepard, giving her a clinical look. "A lot of people lost their lives on that station. I just hope it was worth it."

"Are we going to have a problem, Operative Lawson?" Shepard asked mildly. She gave herself a mental pat on the back, she was regaining the ability not to spout out the first sarcastic statement that came to mind.

"I have the utmost respect for your abilities, Shepard. It's your motivations that concern me." Miranda said, leaning back from the console. "I believe in what Cerberus stands for. Only time will tell if you prove to be an asset to our cause or a liability."

"Because you've studied my history and know I hang out with the weird sections of humanity, have no real ambition and fuck aliens?" Okay, so maybe the brain filter wasn't _quite _in place yet. She smiled as Miranda stiffened ever so slightly. She was good, Shepard wouldn't have caught it if she hadn't been watching for it. "See? My memories are coming back fine." Her smile vanished and the two women studied each other coolly for a long moment. "I am utterly dedicated to stopping the Reapers, Ms. Lawson. Of that, you can be absolutely sure." She might have despised Cerberus, but she hated the Reapers more. The more she remembered, the more that hatred grew.

It must have shown on her face, because Miranda nodded tersely and turned away. "We've got an assignment to do."

* * *

"Freedom's Progress." Shepard studied the datapad in her hand, sitting across from Jacob and Miranda in the shuttle.

"It's a pretty old colony," Jacob offered. "It isn't one of the larger ones, though, probably why it wasn't one of the first to be hit."

"And there haven't been any survivors found at any of the others?" Shepard set the datapad down, troubled.

"None," Miranda confirmed.

"Be nice if we found some. Anything is better than another ghost town."

Thinking back to Eden Prime and other places where the Reapers' influence had been, Shepard wasn't so sure of that, but said nothing. She checked her upgraded armor and guns over as they approached the colony. She'd had a chance to rest up and felt much better. Much better than she should have, as a matter of fact. Miranda had mentioned the cybernetics making her up should balance out the weakness of her muscles for the moment and once she was back in top form, she would actually be a bit stronger than she was before. Her biotic implant was new and state of the art as well, which meant her biotics were a little stronger than she remembered. Wasn't that a kick in the ass?

Her new armor had updated tech armor, which was a toy she was becoming inordinately fond of. She layered a biotic barrier over herself carefully to compliment it, moving a bit to make sure it wouldn't mess anything up, and let it drop. No point in wearing her biotics out until they actually hit danger.

Freedom's Progress was a mining colony. It had more defenses than most small colonies got, which she supposed was necessary since it was located inside the Terminus Systems. Even the most diplomatic and kind hearted of Alliance members stationed out around the colonies wouldn't have been able to help them. Like most colonists, however, they were used to taking care of themselves.

Jacob calling it a ghost town had been spot on. The silence was eerie. Around this time, people should have been eating dinner and heading out for a drink or settling in with their families. There were signs of that: supper food set out on the tables, overturned chairs, things laying shattered on the floor like they had been dropped suddenly.

"No bodies," Miranda commented. "No structural damage and no signs of battle."

Shepard nodded, glancing around, unnerved. "They had a small militia too, if something had attacked full out, they would have fought back."

"The security systems were disabled on the other colonies," Miranda said.

"I don't think that's the case here." Jacob held a hand up.

Because of the silence of the colony, the sounds of whirring and electronic voices boomed as they opened the door to a warehouse.

"FENRIS mechs," Jacob called, spinning behind a crate.

Compared to the looming army of mechs on the Lazarus station, it wasn't a very big group they had to take out. They had the advantage of better equipment and a third trained fighter with them this time as well. Shepard frowned as she bent over one of the fallen FENRIS mechs, trying to figure out what was up with its programming.

"They shouldn't have attacked us," Jacob said, echoing her thoughts. "They should have recognized us as human."

"Someone reprogrammed them to attack on sight." Miranda looked at Shepard for confirmation. The commander leaned back, nodding, able to figure that out from the mech itself but not much else. She'd need the control room for that. "We're not alone here."

But if there were survivors, why would they program the mechs to attack on sight? That would hinder any rescue attempts. It _was _hindering a rescue attempt.

Mechs she was expecting as they made their way further inward. Human survivors she was hoping for. But quarians? That was a big surprise. Shepard brought both her guns up automatically as the door opened, revealing a group of masked figures clad in envirosuits gathered around a table. One of the quarians spun, pointing a gun at them and snapping, "Stop right there!"

Shepard motioned for Jacob and Miranda to stand down. Miranda noted later that Shepard didn't even think about it, making the gesture with the ease of a woman who was used to being obeyed. If the sight of the quarians wasn't shocking enough, the woman's voice that came from behind the one holding a gun on them took her breath away. "Prazza! You said you'd let me handle this!"

She _knew_ that voice, knew the young quarian that swung in between them and Prazza. "Tali?"

Tali'Zorah froze. "...Shepard?"

"I'm not taking any chances with Cerberus operatives," Prazza said.

Shepard winced at being included in that catagory.

"Put those weapons down!" Tali said with a trace of steel in her voice that was new to Shepard. She turned back. "Shepard? Is that...you're alive?"

Shepard managed a crooked smile. Despite all the gun pointing, she found herself unbelievably happy to see a familiar face. So to speak. "Hello, my queen."

Tali's breath escaped through her mask in a rush. "How?"

"I don't fully understand the details myself, but apparently they rebuilt me from the ground up." Shepard jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Miranda. "We came to see what's up with the attacks on these human colonies."

"You'll pardon us for not taking you at your word, Cerberus," Prazza said with open hostility. Puzzled, Shepard tried to remember if there was particularly bad blood between Cerberus and the quarians. She couldn't remember anything in particular besides the obvious fact that the quarians were aliens.

"We're well within our rights to investigate these attacks on a human colony," Miranda said. "I'd like to know what quarians are doing here."

Her tone could have used some work, but that was actually a damn good question. She turned her gaze to Tali, who glared over her shoulder at Prazza. "Weapons down, Prazza. Whatever's going on here, I don't think we need another fight."

Prazza stood down, though with visible reluctance.

Tali addressed Shepard, not even looking at Miranda. "One of our people was here on Pilgrimage. His name is Veetor. We came to find him."

"He came _here_?" Shepard said, surprised.

"Quarians can choose where they go on Pilgrimage. Veetor liked the idea of helping a small settlement. He was always...nervous in crowds."

"Ah."

"She means he was unstable," Prazza said. "Combine that with damage to his suit's CO2 scrubbers and an infection from an open-air exposure, and he's likely delirious."

"Was he the one that reprogrammed the mechs?" Shepard asked. That would explain a lot.

Tali nodded. "When he saw us landing, he hid in a warehouse on the far side of town. We suspect he reprogrammed them to attack anything that moved."

"So you need to get to him before he gets any worse and we need to find out what happened here. Sounds like we have the same goal," Shepard said.

Tali nodded. "You'll need two teams to get past the drones, anyway."

Prazza took a step forward. "Now we're working with Cerberus?"

"No, Prazza, you're working for me," Tali said coldly. "If you can't follow orders, go wait on the ship."

Shepard applauded the slap down silently. Obviously, Tali had come up in the world since her Pilgrimage. Tali turned back to her. "Head for the warehouse through the center of the colony. We'll circle around the far side and draw off some of the drones to clear you a path."

Shepard went over that and nodded in agreement. "Sounds like a plan." She tapped her comm. "Keep in contact, yes?"

"Will do. Good luck, Shepard. See you on the far side."

Shepard narrowed her eyes at her. "Hey, you stole that line from me."

"You weren't using it," Tali said pertly, leading her team out of the warehouse.

* * *

"I love Overload. It's my best friend in the whole world," Shepard sang, watching a mech drop to the ground.

Miranda glanced over at her impatiently, but she heard Jacob chuckle in agreement.

"_Shepard!" _Tali's voice crackled over the comm. _"Prazza and his squad rushed ahead. I told them to wait, but they wouldn't listen! They want to find Veetor and take him away before you get there!"_

"We should have expected this," Miranda said in disgust.

"We could tell he was hot headed and suspicious. We had no idea he was stupid too," Shepard said.

As Tali had warned, there were rocket drones as well as mechs now, floating through the air to land and fire at them.

"_Shepard, we're in the loading docks. Hurry!" _Tali said urgently. _"Veetor reprogrammed a heavy mech. It's tearing Prazza's squad apart!" _

"Idiot," Shepard muttered.

"He did want to get to Veetor first," Miranda commented.

Tali continued, _"Get your squad into cover and I'll open the loading bay doors."_

Miranda and Jacob each moved to one side of the door and Shepard crouched behind a crate. "Now, Tali!"

The only good thing Shepard could say about the sight of the YMIR mech, a very big, heavy plated son of a bitch that towered above them, was that there was no way a colony this size could have more than one. The bay doors opened to the sight of quarians trying to flee or fight and getting mowed down, unable to stand up to it. Shepard urged them to take cover and was relieved to see Tali off to the side doing just that.

Shepard narrowed her eyes, peering around a crate as the mech moved forward.

Her body might not entirely up to speed, but her training was still there, ingrained in every line of her brain.

The first thing they had to do was get rid of its shields. Dark energy rippled around her as Jacob and Miranda unloaded on the thing. Shepard spun out from behind the crate while it turned toward them and sent a warp field rippling through the air. The mech stopped and shuddered, giving Jacob time to dodge to another position, flanking it. Jacob's shots were hurting it the most, hitting its head almost every single time. When it swung toward her, Shepard threw a stasis field around it, surprised once again at the strength of it, she didn't think she could have held something that big before. It gave her a few moments to find cover, trapping it between her and Jacob. She knew when its shields finally failed because the light on its 'face' started blinking more rapidly. Another shudder went through it and Miranda darted forward, picking a crate up with biotics and hurling it hard at the thing. It was knocked back, slamming into a ramp as it exploded.

Shepard came out from around the crate, searching the area cautiously. "Tali?" she said into her comm. There was no answer. Worried, she moved through the warehouse, finally finding the surviving quarians being tended, to her relief, by Tali. The quarian girl looked up and pointed. "Veetor's probably at the back of the loading bay. I'll tend to the wounded."

Shepard nodded and moved out. Jacob pointed silently to an office pod a bit larger than the others toward the back and she nodded. It opened to reveal a dark room lit by little more than a series of screens on the back wall. There was a quarian sitting in a chair in front of them, muttering to himself so low, Shepard had to strain to hear him. "Monsters coming back. Mechs will protect. Safe from swarms. Have to hide. No monsters. No swarms. No-no-no-no-no."

Shepard approached him cautiously. "Uh...Veetor?"

"No Veetor. Not here. Swarms can't find. Monsters coming. Have to hide."

Impatient, Shepard raised her omni-tool and blanked the screens he was staring at. Veetor jerked back, making a low, startled sound, and spun around. Shepard immediately felt guilty for jolting him like that. Jesus, he was just a kid. He was younger than Tali. Veetor stared at them. "You're human. Where did you hide? How come they didn't find you?"

"Who didn't find us?" Miranda asked, her voice sharp.

"The...the monsters. The swarms. They took everyone."

"Monsters? Swarms?" Shepard shook her head.

"You don't know. You didn't see. But I see everything." Veetor hurried back to the screens and did something with his omni tool.

Shepard had seen some seriously weird creatures in her travels. There were beasts that lived beneath the sand of certain desert planets that could creep tendrils up around your legs and drag you down before you realized what was happening. There were wasp-like beasts as long as her arm that could impale a full grown man with their stingers. There were thresher maws that could eat an entire squad of soldiers without taking a single hit. She'd come across the Thorian, which was a plant creature older than the Protheans that could control people using spores.

But this...

The security footage that Veetor brought up showed a scene out of a nightmare. Swarms and monsters, just like he said. Winged bugs that ranged from the size of her fist to bigger than her head flitted past the cameras and the cameras swung to focus on a man sized beast that walked on two legs. The resemblance to humans ended there. Spines and rippled plating covered it from head to toe and its head had a large, sweeping crest.

"My God..." Miranda whispered. "I think it's a Collector."

Shepard looked back at her. "I thought they were a myth."

Jacob shook his head. "They come from beyond the Omega 4 relay. They're real, it's just only a few people have ever seen one in person."

"They usually work through intermediaries," Miranda said, "like slavers or hired mercenaries. If they're involved with the Reapers somehow, it could explain what happened to the colonies."

"They have advanced technology. They could have a weapon that disables an entire settlement at once," Jacob agreed.

"The seeker swarms. No one can hide. The seekers find you. Freeze you. Then the monsters take you away."

"They didn't kill them...?" Shepard didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.

Veetor shook his head. "The monsters took the people onto the ship, and then they left. The ship flew away. But they'll be back for me. No one escapes!"

"I think that's all we're getting out of him, Commander," Jacob said quietly.

"Thank you, Veetor." Shepard stared at the security footage. At those twisted figures on the screen.

"I studied them. The monsters. The swarms. I recorded them on my omni-tool. Lots of readings. Electro magnetic. Dark energy."

Miranda stepped forward eagerly, bringing up her omni-tool. "We need to get that data to the Illusive Man. I'm calling the shuttle now. You grab the quarian."

"No!" They all turned at the sound of Tali's voice. She stalked up to them, moving to stand next to the younger quarian. "Veetor is injured. He needs treatment, not an interrogation."

Jacob lifted a calming hand. "We won't hurt him. We just need to see if he knows anything else. He'll be returned unharmed."

"Your people tried to betray us once already. If we give him to you, we'll never get the intel we need," Miranda said.

"Prazza was an idiot," Tali snapped, "and he and his men paid for it. You're welcome to take Veetor's omni-tool data, but please, just let me take him."

Shepard made a sharp gesture. "Enough. I doubt he can give us anymore than the omni-tool data has and he's hurt enough already." Unlike Jacob, she didn't trust them not to hurt Veetor. Not after what they did to Toombs. "Take him, Tali."

Miranda looked displeased, but said nothing. Tali nodded. "Thank you, Shepard. I'm glad to see you're still the one giving orders." She hesitated. "Good luck out there. If I find anything that can help you, I'll let you know." Her voice was gentle, but firm, like she knew Shepard was ready to ask her to come along. There was also a wariness in her tone that was like a kick in the gut. Whatever she said, Tali didn't fully trust her. Not when she was with Cerberus. Shepard bit back a protest, wishing she could have a little more time with the quarian. But Tali was already turning to help Veetor out, moving toward the door.

Feeling disheartened, Shepard glanced back at the screen, studying the Collectors and their pets until the shuttle came to pick them up.

* * *

"The quarian forwarded their findings from Veetor's debriefing. No new data, but it's a surprising olive branch, given our history," the Illusive Man said with satisfaction. "You and I have different methods, but I can't argue with your results."

Shepard studied the supernova behind him silently. The Illusive Man seemed to wait for her to say something, then continued on when she didn't. "You confirmed the Collectors are behind the abductions."

"Which doesn't surprise you," Shepard said in a flat voice. She was tired and sad. On the way back, she'd done some serious thinking over what she had learned and had come to a few conclusions she wasn't happy with at all.

"I had my suspicions, but I needed proof. The Collectors are enigmatic at best."

Since she hadn't even believed they were real until an hour ago, she couldn't argue with him on that one.

"They periodically travel to the Terminus Systems, looking to gather seemingly unimportant items or specimens. Usually in exchange for their technology." The Illusive man lit a cigarette up with the same practiced grace. The way he did it, so very carefully poised, inexplicably annoyed her. "When their transactions are complete," he continued, "they disappear as quickly as they arrived: back beyond the unmapped Omega 4 relay. Until now, we've had no evidence of direct aggression by the Collectors."

Shepard stirred. "Why is the Omega 4 relay unmapped?"

"No ship that has gone through it, except the Collector ships, has ever returned. Our best guess is that the relay reacts differently to Collector vessels, allowing them safe passage. If they can manipulate relays..."

"It's more proof they're backed by the Reapers," Shepard finished. Since the Reapers had created the mass relays. She didn't know anything else that could directly alter a mass relay. You could change the destination for the smaller ones that went a shorter distance, but you couldn't mess with the relays themselves, even if it was legal. She looked at him directly for the first time, her eyes narrowed. "That's not the only reason you think the Reapers are involved, though."

"The patterns are there, buried in the data. The Council and the Alliance want to believe the Reaper threat ended with Sovereign. You and I know better."

He gave her a moment to let that sink in. Shepard stared at him. "They haven't done anything toward studying the Reapers? Nothing at all?"

"Admiral Anderson has done some things here and there and there are a few outspoken about it, but for the most part, no." The Illusive Man studied her with those cold, implacable eyes. He reminded her of a predator who didn't need to work hard to trap his prey. It would come to him. She felt a jolt go through her, taking her breath away, as she realized why she recognized that look. Her father had a similar one. That same patient arrogance. "I won't wait until the Reapers are on the march," he continued. "We need to take the fight to them. I've already compiled a list of soldiers, scientists, and mercenaries. You'll get dossiers on the best of them. Finding them and convincing them to work with you could be challenging, but you're a natural leader."

Yes, she was. Time and time again she'd proven that to the Alliance. She had the knowledge of the Reapers and the determination to take the battle to them. What she didn't have was the kind of manpower and funding to fight that kind of battle.

Cerberus did.

_The enemy of my enemy is my friend._

"I'll continue to track the Collectors. When they make their next appearance, I'll notify you and your team. Be ready."

Shepard closed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair, letting out a low, humorless chuckle. He had to know the struggle going through her head, so she saw no point in hiding it. "Which one of us is the devil and which one of us is Faust in this bargain, do you figure?"

The Illusive Man didn't answer, simply watching her with that terrible patience. She hated him in that moment, because he was humoring her. He already knew her answer, he was simply waiting her out. He leaned back in his chair. "Before you go, two things. First, head to Omega and find Mordin Solus. He's a brilliant salarian scientist. Our intelligence suggests he may know how to counter the Collectors' paralyzing seeker swarms."

_Omega..._

She felt like she was being pummeled from all sides. "And?"

The Illusive Man smiled, fully gracious since he knew he'd won. "I've found a pilot you might like. I hear he's one of the best. Someone you can trust." He lifted a hand and dismissed the hologram.

A pilot? Shepard blinked at the dark space where the Illusive Man had been. She guessed that meant she was getting a proper ship. She started as she heard something shuffling behind her and turned around.

Jeff "Joker" Moreau smiled at her. "Hey, Commander. Just like old times, huh?"


	6. The Normandy

She stared, wondering if he was a mirage for a long moment, taking a step forward. She saw Joker's eyes widen in shock, his face going pale before he collected himself, but didn't take note of it. He was dressed in black and white like the other Cerberus people she'd seen. Except his hat. He had a ball cap just like his old one. "Joker?"

"The one and only, Commander."

"You're walking..." she said stupidly. She'd never seen him walk without a cane.

"One nice thing about working for Cerberus. Good medical benefits. They did some work on me, so I can move around a bit now." He motioned for her to follow him. "Close your mouth, you'll draw flies."

Shepard drifted after him. "I can't believe it's you."

"Look who's talking," Joker said. "I saw you get spaced."

"I...okay, point taken. I got lucky despite the strings attached. How the hell did you get here, Joker?"

"It all fell apart without you, Commander," Joker said, uncharacteristically sober. "Everything you stirred up, the Council just wanted it gone."

"I was kind of hoping he was exaggerating about that," Shepard murmured.

Joker didn't need to ask who she meant. "The team was broken up, records were sealed, and I was grounded."

"Grounded? You?" How could they be that stupid? She made it a point not to agree with Joker when he bragged he was the best helmsmen in the Alliance but that didn't change the fact that it was true.

Joker nodded. "The Alliance took away the only thing that mattered to me. When someone came and said they were working to bring you back, hell yeah, I joined up."

Shepard fell silent as they walked. "Do you really trust him? The Illusive Man?"

Joker gave her a sharp look. He'd never heard that much uncertainty in her voice before. But then again, he knew how big a grudge she held against Cerberus. "I don't trust anyone who makes more than I do." That got a smile out of her. "But they aren't all bad. Saved your life. Let me fly-."

"None of which they would have done if we didn't know anything about the Reapers," Shepard pointed out. "But I guess you're right."

Joker raised an eyebrow as they came up to a door. "And then there's this...they only told me last night."

The lights came on as the door opened to reveal a large hanger beyond. Shepard's breath caught in her throat as she took in the sight of the ship within. Her eyes traced along lines she knew as well as the back of her hand.

The Normandy. It was the Normandy.

"Good to be home, huh, Commander?" Joker said quietly.

"How...?"

"I guess they must have hacked the Alliance databases, found the plans for the original, and upgraded it. Sounds like something they would do."

He was right. It was bigger than her Normandy had been. It was decked out in Cerberus black and yellow rather than Alliance colors. She frowned a bit at the Cerberus logo in disapproval. It felt like the Illusive Man was pissing on it to mark his territory.

"Think she needs a name still, Commander," Joker said pointedly.

She snorted, raising an eyebrow at him. "Like that's even a question."

* * *

Shepard had to give the Illusive Man credit: when the man wanted to bribe you, he didn't fuck around.

It was the Normandy...but different. She refused to say better. It was bigger, fancier, with more expensive and updated equipment. Which was a sharp reminder she was two years behind on what the best technology was. Oh, that was intolerable. She'd have to remedy that as soon as possible.

Crewmen milled about and she got a whole lot of strange, wide eyed looks as she passed. She was dressed in simple clothing, having politely refused a Cerberus uniform. There was only so far she was willing to go. Plus the black and white outfit didn't flatter someone of her coloring at _all_.

"Welcome aboard the new Normandy, Commander," Jacob said a bit grandly, earning a crooked smile as she took everything in.

Miranda came up beside her as she wandered around the CIC deck. "I've been looking over the dossiers. I strongly recommend starting by acquiring Mordin Solus, the salarian professor on Omega."

Shepard didn't answer, keeping her face averted so Miranda couldn't catch any expression that might be crossing her face. She didn't want think about Omega right now. She'd only thought about Omega at all during the past decade because she had no intention of ever going back to it.

"We know the Collectors use some kind of advanced technology to immobilize their victims. We'll need him to develop a countermeasure to protect us," Miranda persisted.

"We would be helpless without something like that," Shepard conceded.

"_Acquiring Professor Solus seems like the most logical way to start," _a female voice said from behind her.

Shepard turned, blinking, as a hologram appeared on a console not far from her. It was a sphere sitting atop some kind of pedestal, a vertical 'mouth' moving as it spoke. "And you are...?"

"_I am the Normandy's artificial intelligence. The crew like to refer to me as EDI."_

"Oh...nice to meet you, EDI..." They had an AI. They had something on the ship that was outlawed in nearly every place in the galaxy. They had a program that was smarter than they were running the ship. "Um, Joker didn't throw things at you when you introduced yourself to him, did he?"

"_I do not helm the ship, Commander. Mr. Moreau's talents will not go to waste, I believe he understands that," _EDI replied. _"During combat, I operate the electronic warfare and cyberwarfare suites. Beyond that, I cannot interface with the ship's systems. I observe and offer analysis and advice. Nothing more." _The hologram disappeared.

Could an AI get miffed? Shepard wondered, studying the spot where EDI had disappeared and feeling the absurd need to apologize. "Well," she said, a bit off balance. "Okay." She continued on through the ship, letting Miranda and Jacob head to their posts. Jacob was in charge of the armory, she discovered. Miranda...

Shepard was in charge, but Miranda was the link between the Normandy and the Illusive Man. Officially, she was the Normandy's XO, but Miranda had hinted subtly that she was still higher on the Cerberus hierarchy than Shepard was. She was really hoping that wasn't going to become an issue, because everyone was a Cerberus employee. Although knowing Joker would obey an order from her over an order from Miranda...Joker had apparently made _that _clear...settled her a bit.

"Welcome aboard, Commander."

Shepard glanced over to meet the gaze of a pretty green eyed redhead standing at a console near the galaxy map. She saluted. "I'm Yeoman Kelly Chambers. I've been assigned as your administrative assistant."

"I need an administrative assistant? God, I'm not a CEO for Cerberus' business or anything, am I?" Although, that would be a nice way to ruin some part of Cerberus, which she still wasn't adverse to.

Kelly Chambers smiled patiently. "I'll manage your messages, and help you monitor the crew. And I must say, it's an honor to work under you, Commander Shepard."

"It is? Oh...well, thanks." Shepard ran her fingers through her hair. "It's nice to meet you, Ms. Chambers."

"Please, call me Kelly."

"Kelly, then." Shepard eyed her console. "Messages and appointments and such...is that all you do? Don't they still have VI s that can do that?"

"Well, being a yeoman is just my official role. Unofficially, I observe the crew." She shrugged. "Everyone knows how risky this mission is. Many of us may not be coming back. That's a lot of pressure. I have a degree in psychology. I'm good at sensing when people are overly taxed."

"You're the ship's shrink?" Shepard winced. _Filter, Brain, I need that damn filter!_

But Kelly just laughed. "In a word, yes. I'll look for warning signs. I listen. It's not a full time job and it's best done informally."

Shepard pondered this. She'd been on missions where she wasn't sure if she was coming back, but she'd never had an on ship counselor before. "Well, it's good we have someone with your skills on the ship." Except anything she observed, the Illusive Man would probably know too. She'd have to watch herself.

Kelly beamed. "Thank you, Commander."

"Do I have anything that needs attention?"

"You have messages in your private terminal and Joker would like to speak to you on the bridge."

"He just wants to show off his new digs," Shepard said, nodding at her and turning away. "Thank you, Kelly."

"Let me know if you need anything, Commander." Kelly turned back to her console. "With you leading us, we can't fail."

_Let's hope. _Shepard thought.

Since Joker was making the final preps for takeoff, Shepard let him be for now, wandering through the ship, meeting crew members. She met Sargent Gardener in the mess. He acted as the ship's cook, but like Kelly, he seemed to have a variety of tasks. He was rather flattered she had come to meet him, which embarrassed her. She hadn't expected to meet so many people happy to see her on a Cerberus ship. She gathered things were usually a bit more formal with Cerberus but she liked to be personally involved with the running of her ship.

Anderson had taught her that.

She met the main engineers, Gabriella Daniels and Kenneth Donnelly, who she had no doubt were the best at their jobs, but the engineering deck just looked incomplete without a quarian standing at one of the consoles. They were an interesting pair, though. Donnelly seemed quite enthusiastic about serving under her, it was kind of flattering, really. All of this praise and awe was going to make her insufferably big headed.

"Kick the Collectors in the daddy bags," she murmured, amused, repeating Donnelly's phrase. She had to remember that one.

She made a round into the medlab...and drew up short.

Dr. Karin Chakwas turned in her chair. Her eyes widened a bit and she huffed out a breath.

"Hi, Doc..." Shepard said in a small voice.

"Commander Shepard. I watched the Normandy crumble with you on board. It's good to see you alive," Dr. Chakwas said, rising from her chair. She looked a bit older than Shepard remembered, but otherwise looked the same. Dressed in a medic's outfit, her neat cap of silvered hair cut short, her eyes and voice calm and grave.

"Likewise, Doctor," Shepard said. "I didn't...well, I still don't know who lived and who died. I'm glad you made it. Though, I never expected to see you here."

"Surprising, even to me. Yet here I am." Chakwas studied her. "The kind of trauma you endured would've changed most people, but not you, I see. Welcome back, Shepard."

Shepard wasn't so sure she wasn't changed. Part of her still felt like an automaton, especially now. A VI executing the path it had been programmed on. She almost said so, but checked herself, saying instead, "Surely the Alliance didn't ground you the way they did Joker?"

"Not exactly. After the Normandy was destroyed, we were all reassigned. I was stationed at the Mars Navel Medical Center. A very respected position, but it wasn't a starship."

Shepard nodded, understanding that perfectly. "Everything planet side is so...still."

"Too static. And boring. I've spent most of my life working on starships."

"I still wouldn't have pegged you for the Cerberus type, Doctor. Of course, I wouldn't peg Joker as the Cerberus type either..."

"We don't work for Cerberus, Shepard. We work for you...on a mission that could be crucial to the survival of the human race. I have faith that your dealings with Cerberus will be ethical. I trust you, Commander."

The woman could have no idea how much those words meant to her right now.

Chakwas was studying her with sharp eyes. "You haven't been eating."

"I have too," Shepard said, automatically defensive. "I got tossed straight into an assignment right after we escaped, I didn't have time for anything fancy."

Chakwas took a firm hold of her chin, looking over her face. "You need to eat and rest regularly in order to build your strength back up, Shepard. Ms. Lawson gave me your medical reports, you were woken up far earlier than you should have been. You have to be careful." She frowned, tracing some of the tears in her cheek with cool fingers. "And keep an eye on these."

"Yes, ma'am."

Chakwas' lips almost twitched into a smile, but her eyes remained stern. "And you'll need regular physicals until I'm certain you're fully healed. I mean it, Shepard."

Shepard nodded, looking serious. "I promise."

* * *

The topmost level of the Normandy SR2 was known as the Loft. And it was all hers.

Shepard stood at the top of the stairs leading down into her room and just stared. The bed was large and far more luxurious than the one she'd had on the old Normandy. There was a low couch all along one wall. And fish tanks set in the wall. She had damn fish tanks. Shepard tapped the glass of one idly, shaking her head, and made a circuit around the room.

"You do know how to do a bribe, you fucker," Shepard said, not without some admiration.

Her console was top of the line and she was startled to see a screen separating the office area from the rest of the room. She played with it for a few minutes, fascinated, then peeked into the bathroom. Not large, but it was well made, with her own shower. The lights clicked on as she went further in and she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the sink, really seeing herself for the first time.

Now she understood why Joker and Chakwas had been so shocked when they had first seen her: she looked like a goddamned corpse.

Mechanically, Shepard stripped down, standing naked and looking down at herself. She was a skeleton with skin. There was no hint of the soft tan color her skin had been before: it was deathly white and pulled taut over her bones. She could count her ribs if she ran her hand over them. Her ash blond hair was almost white, as well, and her eyes were a paler gray than they had been, like the color had been washed out. She leaned toward the mirror, fascinated and appalled, taking note of spots of red light deep within her pupils and showing through the still healing tears of her face. She ran her fingers over her ears, her nose, along the curve of her eyebrow where she'd had piercings at one point. They were all healed over now. Her fingers continued downward, along the curve of her left shoulder. On Akuze, she'd gotten grazed by the thresher maw's spitting venom. Just a few drops, but they had burned into her shoulder, festering as she struggled to survive. By the time she had been picked up, she had been feverish, her shoulder almost eaten away. They had managed to rebuild her shoulder, it was always a little weaker than the other one, but she had maintained full use of it. But it had been forever marked by a scar that spread along her neck to over her shoulder. She could still feel whorls of scar tissue there along her neck, but portions of it had been overlaid with strips of smooth skin on the shoulder.

She had plenty of new scars to make up for it. She had several long, knotted scars on her sides where the skin weave had been set. Lighter scars crisscrossed her skin everywhere. Her tattoos were gone, she noted. All four of the ones on her arms were gone, the tarot card one on her ankle- the Queen of Cups, representing her mother -was almost entirely gone, she could still see traces of inked skin here and there.

Shepard took a deep breath and slowly forced herself to turn around, glancing over her shoulder into the mirror. She was stunned to see the one on her back, her labyrinth, was still there. She peered closer. It was re-inked, the lines darker and a few of them out of place because of scars on her back, but it was intact. Someone must have redone it. She let out a shuddering sigh of relief. She had an odd twist of memory of Wilson's voice at her back and a faint prick on her skin. Had it been Wilson, of all people?

Shaking her head, Shepard got dressed again and stepped out of the bathroom. She collapsed into the chair at her desk, breathing out a soft sigh, staring at the console in front of her. She could see a faint outline of her reflection on the screen, but she'd had quite enough of looking at herself, thanks.

She turned the console on to vanish the image, scanning through the programs idly for a moment before she switched over to her message center. They had linked it up to her original address and she was startled to see the first one was from Admiral David Anderson: _On the off chance that the rumors are true, and you actually are alive, I need you to come and talk to me on the Citadel. A lot has changed in the last two years. You put us on the Council, and it's only fair that you be allowed to speak for yourself about what we've been hearing. _

She was trying to decide which place she dreaded to go more: the Citadel or Omega. Lots to do, she thought, trying to drag herself out of the sink of depression. Dossiers to look at, ship to get used to, making sure her current team didn't at least want to stab her in the back at the first opportunity...

Shepard's eyes narrowed and she rose to her feet suddenly, lighting up her omni-tool. Oh, she was willing to bet...

A quick scan revealed three bugs in her room. She disabled them quite calmly, wondering how many were all around the ship. And most of them probably echoed back right to Miranda's office.

She stood in the middle of the room for a long moment, her eyes narrowed into slits, then she searched around the room until she found the communications center on the desk. She buzzed the intercom to the bridge. "Joker?"

"_Commander?"_

"As soon as she's ready, plot a course for the Citadel."

"_Aye, aye, Commander."_


	7. Old Friends and New Friends

"_No, no, no, no. Oh, my scars and whiskers, no! You swing a girl around like that and you'll both end up with broken limbs!"_

_Shepard paused and peered into the garage, one eyebrow raised. "Uh, hello?"_

"_Hey, Shepard!" Howard waved one hand at her cheerfully. He was standing amidst broken machines both Alliance and colony and their M29 Grizzly had been raised up so Howard could work on it. Two kids she recognized from the colony were in there with him and gave her startled and guilty...and slightly defiant...looks as they turned around. "Just the woman I need. C'mere for a sec, eh?" He took her by the hand and dragged her into the garage. She became aware of music playing from somewhere for the first time. "The kids are having a shindig and are a bit nervous about the dancing part. First time, you know."_

"_No, I don't know," Shepard said with fond exasperation. "I don't do shindigs, I do concerts where dancing consists of elbowing the person next to you."_

"_You have your version of human contact and the rest of us have ours, dear."_

"_The lead singer of DeadStarr cut himself on his guitar and bled all over us in the front row once, how's _that _for contact?"_

"_Shut up and dance, woman." Howard whirled her with surprising grace. "Let me show them how it's done!" _

_She laughed and tried to keep up with him as he danced her around the floor to the music and the hoots and hollers of the other mechanics. The kids were grinning now. Howard chuckled. "And there's the secret to it, boys."_

"_Let me guess: just have fun?" Shepard said. _

_Howard dipped her with a dramatic flourish. "And that's the reason she's the commander, folks. She knows her shit."_

Shepard opened her eyes as a beep from the console indicated her recent search had come up with nothing, drawing her out of her reverie. Her vision was blurred and she had to swipe at eyes that were suddenly stinging.

She had been spending a lot of time at her desk on the way to the Citadel. Miranda wasn't happy with that they were going but Shepard had calmly replied she would be able to concentrate better if she saw how things stood herself. There were also things on the Citadel she wanted to get. She doubted her apartment was still as it had been, but there were other places she had kept stuff.

She had gone over the dossiers available, raising her eyebrows at the eclectic ensemble. And lucky her, not just one, but three people on Omega to go get.

Shepard leaned back in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck. She needed to eat. She had been keeping her promise on that, and downing so many energy drinks, she was surprised she wasn't bouncing off the walls. Dr. Chakwas was cautiously optimistic she would be able to regain her full strength. There was a small fitness center belowdeck, but Shepard had enough room if she pushed this and that aside to go through her own workouts and practice with hand to hand combat moves that had been drilled into her during N training. Keeping in mind Dr. Chakwas' warnings about pushing herself too hard...at this point she could damage herself permanently...she tried to balance it out with sitting quietly.

She had also been working- subtly -on her console. It was unlikely she would be able to block everything they had planted in the systems to allow them to spy on what went on, but she could do her damn best. One of the things she needed to get on the Citadel was a proper omni-tool and the VI program she had crafted herself for it. Once she had Herman, she could guard her privacy a bit better.

She had contacted Vin Sol, the volus she used to do her business, and had been pleased to discover the account she had with him had been untouched, as well as the alias she had for some aspects of business, Nicole Daniels. Between that and what she had scraped together hacking things on the Lazarus station and the colony, she had enough money of her own she didn't have to depend on Cerberus for what she needed personally. She had no idea if the Illusive Man knew about the Daniels alias, but she wasn't going to bring it to his attention. She'd mainly used it years ago to help colonists get things they needed and couldn't get. Howard had helped her set it up.

_Howard. _Shepard closed her eyes, feeling saturated with sorrow. He'd left the Alliance after her death, had gone back out to the Traverse. He'd died almost a year ago defending a colony against slavers.

It was how he would have wanted to go out, she consoled herself. But, God, she wished he was here. She would have given anything to see him wandering the new Normandy with a cigar in one hand, dressed in one of those ridiculous brightly patterned shirts of his.

People like him and Donnelly and Anderson had done their best to defend her, but as Miranda and the Illusive Man had both warned her, the Council and the Alliance had been determined to believe the Reaper threat was over. Her reputation, which had waxed and waned like the moon even when she had been alive, was officially still as the savior of the Citadel. But with her dead, the rumors and speculations about her sanity- citing her traumatic early life and hard military career -had run rampant. At best, she was a savior, yes, but also an eccentric and a troublemaker. At worst, she was an attention seeking, crazy, deviant whore. Her obsession with these 'Reaper' creatures was attributed to anything from paranoia to ego. She could only hope this meeting with Anderson would help.

Shepard forced herself to concentrate and studied the lines of information scrolling across her console, frowning when it came up blank. She tried another search of records from another section of Citadel space, typing VAKARIAN, GARRUS into the search bar.

She found plenty on his father, but aside from some articles about Garrus' involvement with finding Saren, there was nothing.

Shepard had never worried about Tali, even before she had seen her at Freedom's Progress. Tali had always had her people to focus on and had always intended to return to the Migrant Fleet. The same went for Kaidan Alenko. She had no idea where he had been stationed, but he had always been loyal to the Alliance at the core of him and she wasn't surprised at all to know he was still with them. He'd probably been promoted and assigned somewhere his skills could be put to good use.

She'd expected Urdnot Wrex to still be on Tuchanka, and by all accounts he still was. He'd been planning to start rallying the krogan into joining together to save their race and that, too, he appeared to be doing. If anyone could pull it off, it was Wrex.

Liara had surprised her. She had expected Liara, if anything, to go back to her studies of the Protheans. Liara was a scholar at heart. Instead, she was on Illium working as an information broker. Shepard could safely say she never saw that coming. Not that she didn't think Liara was smart enough to do it. She was very good at finding out things most people couldn't have gotten close to. But the information trade required a certain ruthlessness she never would have thought Liara had. Not in million years.

The Illusive Man had told Shepard not to trust her. The irony of that was almost funny.

She'd sent a message to her anyway, but she had not heard anything back yet.

And Garrus...

He'd gone back to C-sec to keep himself occupied and help people until Spectre training started. Not long after her death, however, he had disappeared. There were several reports of him publicly arguing about the Reapers, but then he had left the Citadel and traveled from port to port before she lost track of him completely.

_Where'd you go, handsome? _she wondered, shutting down the console and looking out over her room. She'd always thought Garrus would make a good Spectre. Something to temper and guide that hot headed passion for justice- to punish the guilty and protect people who needed it - without strangling him with rules.

The fact she knew where all the others were except him troubled her more deeply than she ever could have expected.

She rubbed her eyes, gritty from lack of sleep. It wasn't for lack of trying. The moment her head had hit the pillow, the nightmares that had plagued her sleep for as long as she could remember started up again; mad jumbles of images from the Prothean beacon and memory dragging her out of sleep soaked with sweat and panting. If it kept up, she would have to talk to Chakwas about finding something to knock her out. _If they think I'm crazy now, they ought to see me in the grip of sleep madness_.

The intercom buzzed. _"Commander?"_

"Joker."

"_We'll hit the Citadel in about an hour, just giving you a heads up. I'm planting us in one of the lower decks because, you know, Cerberus."_

"Nervous about flying a ship into territory where Cerberus has been declared a terrorist organization in a ship with a Cerberus icon branded all over it? Tsk, grow a spine, Joker."

"_Eh, it's just a matter of knowing where to go and what palms to grease. At least it's not my money."_

* * *

Zakara Ward. Shepard knew this ward better than any other. It was the most diverse of all of them. The others were dominated by asari, turians, and salarians. You not only found more humans here, you also found more of the other races like hanar, elcor and volus. This made it much more interesting, in Shepard's opinion.

She closed her eyes. The Wards were always noisy but sound seemed to be amplified now that there was so much more of it. It felt like all the voices were bouncing around in her skull. Miranda had said something about the audial implants they'd had to use to fix her hearing properly but even she wasn't sure why her hearing was so off. Maybe she should get Donnelly or Daniels to stick a screwdriver in her ear and adjust it, Shepard thought sourly.

"Commander," Jacob said quietly, nodding toward their right.

"You'll have to make him scream a little. He's not going to tell you everything just 'cause you ask."

Shepard found focusing on one voice helped a little bit. She turned her attention to the man sitting behind a desk to her right.

They hadn't had this station or the security checkpoint off the docks two years ago. Of course, she hadn't made it through without setting off alarms. She was a walking corpse.

"If you don't have the stomach, or you're worried about being reported, I can take care of it."

This charming gentleman, one Captain Bailey, was who she'd been sent to talk things over with. He was glaring at the officer leading a suspect into interrogation...which was promising to be painful for him, considering the way she kept assuring Captain Bailey she could handle it. "Yes?" Bailey spoke carelessly and then blinked at the console in front of him as she stopped in front of his desk, his brows furrowing. "I see the problem already, Commander Shepard. My console says you're," he got a good look at her and stared for a moment, "dead."

She was slowly resigning herself to earning a lot of stares until she looked a little better. "I could always be a poor imposter claiming to be me."

"We have the best screening equipment in the galaxy," Bailey said, shaking his head. "Those scanners can sample DNA from skin flakes. Hell, if you have unregistered gene mods, they can figure those out."

She hoped she didn't have any of those, but how the hell was she to know? "Your sargent out there said you could help."

"Usually, you'd have to go through the Station Security Administration to reactivate your IDs," Bailey said thoughtfully. "Then to Customs and Immigration to regain access to the Citadel itself."

Jacob groaned behind her. "That'll take all day."

Bailey nodded, smiling wryly. "And probably a stop by the treasury. 'Spending a year dead' is a popular tax dodge."

"Hey, I've never tried that to dodge taxes." Though she'd used a couple other dodges for the Daniels account. It was easy since Vin Sol didn't operate technically in Citadel space.

Bailey studied her for a moment and then took her completely by surprise. "I can see you're a busy woman. So how about I just press this button right here, and we call it done?"

"Couldn't one of us- or both of us -get into trouble for that?"

Bailey shrugged. "There's no way to fool the DNA scanners in that tunnel. You're you. Why wait in long lines and fill out a mass of useless hardcopy paperwork to get to the same place?"

Shepard, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, found herself smiling. "Why, indeed?"

"Some of us haven't forgotten what you did, Commander." She didn't think the trace of bitterness in Bailey's voice was good news for her. "The Council does everything by the book. They've had thousands of years to write it. Sometimes things need to get done without a committee vote."

_Garrus would have liked you. _"Not big on formalities, eh? I like that."

His eyes met hers briefly. "I'm with them right up until they keep people from doing their jobs."

Garrus would definitely have agreed with that. Bailey tapped something out on the console and the screen flashed. "There, I just saved you about nine days of running around."

"We all appreciate that," Jacob spoke up honestly.

Bailey nodded. "That said, you should head up to the Presidium and tell them you're still alive. The Council probably wants to talk to the one that saved their scaly asses."

"That's the impression I got. Thanks," Shepard said.

"The best thing about working C-sec is that any equipment, information, or money you need, you get."

_Unless you're trying to build a case against a rogue Spectre and the Council doesn't want to believe it._

"Anyway. Something else you need? Or can I get back to work?" Shepard hesitated, hating to keep him when he'd done her such a favor but she had a feeling honest sources of information like him were going to be few and far between. "Last time I was here you couldn't find a human captain anywhere in C-sec." She remembered seeing more and more humans in C-sec blue before she'd gotten spaced, but none of them had gotten so high in rank.

Bailey gave her that wry smile again. "C-sec took a lot of casualties when the geth boarded the Presidium. The Special Response division was hard hit. They stopped turning their noses up at human resumes. They needed bodies in uniform, and we had the most experienced bodies."

She had one of those rapid flashes of memory. The Normandy blowing Sovereign out of the air far above their heads as Saren's corpse lay sparking and spasming on the ground beneath the Council's chamber. Pieces of the Reaper spinning in apparent slowness toward the windows. She winced. She had known the casualties and the extent of the damage before she had died. She knew she had, because she remembered keeping updated on how the repairs were going. Despairing of trying to remember on her own, she just asked about it. "What about the damage from Sovereign's attack? They've got it mostly repaired, yes?"

"The Presidium was pretty shot up. Of course, they fixed that first," Bailey said. "All of the wards got hit with debris when the ship exploded. Most of the damage was superficial, and the keepers got things restored fast."

The keepers. The little critters that scurried about, fixing the Citadel and rearranging it according to some kind of logic only they were privy to. The Reapers' little green servants who the Protheans had stolen away. Such a simple little change, but it had thrown a wrench into the cogs of the Reapers' plan and sent it to a screeching halt. Everything that led up to the attack could be traced back to it. The keepers were the ones that were supposed to activate the giant mass relay the Citadel turned into and allow their masters to come through, hitting the galactic civilization right at its center. Instantly gaining control of the mass relays and all the information they needed to exterminate every race they deemed technologically advanced enough. The Prothean scientists who had survived on Ilos had managed to change something in the keepers that made it so they only responded to the Citadel itself. When Sovereign had ordered them to open the mass relay, they hadn't responded, and it had been forced to take on more primitive tools. Like Saren.

"Teyseri Ward got the worst- a big chunk hit near Dilinaga Concert Hall," Bailey continued, "They're still clearing wreckage and trying to get power restored."

She nodded slowly, trying to dredge herself out of memories. It was getting easier to do but she still was getting caught off guard. "Thank you, Captain."

He accepted the hand she stuck out, shaking it. "You need anything else, let me know."

* * *

Admiral David Anderson stood on the balcony of Councilor Udina's office, staring out over the Presidium that had been his home and workplace for the past two years. Everything was neat, orderly, set far off from the hustle and bustle of the wards.

If only the politics that ran through it were so neat and orderly, Anderson thought.

"This meeting would be more productive if Udina was to join us." Anderson glanced over his shoulder at the image of the asari councilor. All three of them were present via holo projectors set in an alcove in one wall. It reminded him eerily of the time- it seemed a lifetime ago -Councilor Udina, then an ambassador, had stood before the Council arguing about Saren Arterius' attack on the Eden Prime colony. Shepard had been there that day too.

He was glad he'd caught sight of the two figures striding over the bridge toward the embassy before he'd summoned the Council so they didn't have to see the jolt it gave him. He'd gotten word she had arrived on the Citadel a half hour or so before but part of him still hadn't believed it. His former XO and protégé.

Shepard.

"Councilor Udina isn't available." Anderson had managed to maneuver it that way. "As his top advisor, I speak with his full authority and approval." They probably knew the approval part was bullshit, but it would do for now. The idea of dealing with Shepard with Udina in the same room gave him a headache. "She'll be here any-" He cut off abruptly as he heard the door open and turned. And stared.

Arian Shepard cut a distinctive figure. She was tall for a human woman, she topped out at just under six feet, and whip thin. The sharp features of her face were a mixture of Asian and European features- she was a mixed bag of genetics like most humans -but that shock of blond hair, a rarity in this day and age, made her easy to pick out at any time.

But if he'd passed her on the street, he wouldn't have known immediately that it was Shepard. Not this ghost pale specter of a woman watching them with wary eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Council members staring too.

_Good God, Shepard, what the _hell _happened to you? _Anderson cleared his throat, swallowing that question. "Ah, Commander. We were just talking about you."

"Indeed." There was nothing outright disrespectful in her tone or the way her eyes swept each person in the room. It might have been better if there was. The complete lack of any expression in her face or voice was unnerving. Her gaze settled on him and her expression softened a bit, making her look more like the woman he'd known. "Hello, sir." She saluted.

"It's good to have you back, Shepard," he replied quietly.

The salarian councilor spoke up. "We've heard many rumors surrounding your unexpected return. Some of them are...unsettling."

"We called this meeting so you could explain your actions, Shepard," the asari councilor said. "We owe you that much. After all, you saved our lives in the battle against Saren and his geth."

"Saren and his geth," Shepard repeated, so quietly it was almost inaudible. She cocked her head, studying the Council for a long moment before speaking. "The Collectors are abducting human colonists out in the Terminus Systems." There was something very off about the way she was speaking. There was no urgency in her voice, no plea for belief. Her tone, her expression were...assessing. The statement was almost a challenge. "It's possible they're working for the Reapers."

Anderson felt a jolt go through him. He had read some of the reports of those abductions. And had wondered...

"The Terminus Systems are beyond our jurisdiction! Your colonists knew this when they left Council Space," the turian councilor snapped.

Anderson spoke up, even knowing it would do no good. "You're missing the point, Councilor. The Reapers are involved."

The turian snorted. "Ah, yes. Reapers." He actually made quote marks with his fingers around the word as if the disdain in his voice wasn't enough. "The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed those claims."

The air seemed to go out of Shepard. She closed her eyes and her breath came out in a soft rush.

Anderson turned to her. "Shepard, no one else encountered the hologram on Ilos that told you the truth about the Reapers. Only you and your crew ever spoke to Sovereign. I believe you, but with out evidence from another source, the others think Saren was behind the geth attacks."

Incredibly, Shepard smiled. She didn't open her eyes. "Of course." She chuckled low in her throat and it was a terrible sound. There was genuine humor in it and the worst part was, Anderson could understand why she found it so horribly funny. She was laughing at the situation, laughing at them all, herself included. She turned away toward the balcony.

The Council heard it too, and clearly didn't appreciate it. Anderson wanted to shake her. She wasn't doing a thing to help her case or convince anyone she wasn't crazy. The silence stretched out through the office, vibrating with tension. The asari councilor finally broke it, striving for diplomacy. "We are in a difficult position, Shepard. You are working for Cerberus- an avowed enemy of the Council. This is treason, a capital offense."

Anderson bristled. "That's going too far. Shepard is a hero. If Councilor Udina were here, he wouldn't let this whitewash continue."

"It is an infernal bargain, though," Shepard agreed without turning around.

Another silence stretched out. The asari councilor finally fell back on what she was really good at. "Maybe there is a compromise. Not a public acknowledgment, given your ties, but something to show peripheral support."

Shepard turned her head to look over her shoulder at them, face expressionless.

The turian councilor sighed, looking over at the asari, then back to Shepard. "If you keep a low profile and restrict your operations to the Terminus Systems, the Council is willing to offer you reinstatement as a Spectre."

A smile with that same awful amusement curved her lips for a moment, then vanished as she considered the offer. "All right."

The asari councilor nodded. "Good luck with your investigation, Shepard. We hope for a quick resolution...and a quick end to your relationship with Cerberus."

The holograms of the Council vanished as if to punctuate that statement.

Anderson sighed and turned away. "That went better than I expected. Although, you do realize the Council's offer is symbolic. They won't actually do anything."

Shepard didn't answer, staring silently at the empty projectors.

Anderson didn't even know how to begin asking all the questions he had. Two years worth of them and they hung in the air between them. He started to speak and was interrupted as the doors opened and Udina strolled in, looking down at a datapad in his hand. "Anderson, we need to talk about..." He glanced up and stopped. "Shepard?" He said the name as if asking for confirmation it was really her. Anderson didn't blame him for that. It was a rare sight to see Councilor Udina stunned into incoherency. He managed to recover, drawing himself up. "Shepard. What are you doing here?"

"Councilor." Shepard finally looked away from the holo projectors.

"I'd heard you were alive, but I didn't expect to see you on the Citadel." His tone said quite clearly that he didn't consider seeing her a good thing. Udina and Shepard had never gotten along. The best they could manage was professional tolerance. Shepard considered Udina a good politician and pretty much worthless as anything else and Udina thought she was a PR nightmare. Which she was. No matter what her deeds, Shepard was the opposite of what Udina thought someone representing humanity should be: namely a savvy, well groomed soldier with a spotless background. Instead, she was...well, Shepard.

"I invited her here to speak with the Council. We just finished our meeting," Anderson said.

Udina had already figured that out and his glare could have scorched flesh from bone. "You went to the Council behind my back? Do the words political shit storm mean anything to you?"

"The Council reinstated my Spectre status," Shepard said dully, seemingly unmoved by Udina's tone. She moved toward the door with little more than a glance at either of them. "They're just happy I'm staying out in the Terminus Systems."

Udina didn't even bother to try and hide his relief. "Yes...I could see how that arrangement works for both sides."

"Out of sight, out of mind," Shepard said. Anderson couldn't see her expression, but the words were spoken with such blatant mockery and contempt, it was like a slap to the face. She walked out the door before Udina could respond.

Udina stared after her, his jaw tight, before turning his wrath back on Anderson. "You still had no right to do this without my knowledge. Maybe it's time the Alliance found me a new advisor."

Oh, here they went again. "And let them know your advisor arranged that deal without you?" Anderson hated politics but that didn't mean he couldn't play them when he had to. "You can say you knew all along. Or you can explain to the Alliance how you want to replace me for doing your job."

Udina's hands tightened into fists but this time, at least, Anderson had him over a barrel and they both knew it. "I'll tell the other Councilors I'm on board." He placed emphasis on the word 'other', as if to remind Anderson who actually stood on the Council now, like Anderson could ever forget.

Anderson turned away. "I want to talk to Shepard before she leaves."

"Yes. Encourage her to get to the Terminus Systems soon, Anderson. It would be best for all concerned."

Anderson gritted his teeth. Udina had been insufferable enough as an ambassador. He was even worse now as a Councilor. But he was good. He was very good at promoting humanity's interests on the Citadel and knew the game of intergalactic politics like no other human. Having seen the scope of those politics, how fragile the balance was, he could- reluctantly -see where the Council was coming from trying to move past Sovereign and Saren and talk of the Reapers. That didn't mean he agreed with it.

Shepard was standing on the platform outside the office, looking down at the street below, a small metal box in her hands. She kept turning it over and over between her fingers. The man Anderson had seen accompanying her across the bridge was standing not far from her, leaning back against the railing. He watched Anderson emerge silently. To Anderson's surprise, he pushed away from the railing and gave him a military salute, his posture absolutely perfect. Shepard glanced back. "Admiral Anderson, this is Jacob Taylor. Mr. Taylor, the admiral. I have no doubt you've heard about him."

"Plenty, Commander. Pleased to meet you, sir."

Anderson gave him a nod, taking him in with a glance. Cerberus, that much was obvious from the uniform. Younger than Shepard by a few years, he judged, but he had some seasoning, and probably with the Alliance at some point. "Would you give us a moment? I'm sure your ship is going to need help getting ready to leave," he said pointedly. Polite or not, he wasn't speaking in front of a Cerberus operative.

Taylor stiffened, catching the tone. Shepard looked over at him. "The admiral isn't comfortable speaking candidly in front of you. You don't have to wait up for me, Taylor, you might as well get the browbeating from Miranda over with. If you get a head start, you can deflect most of it on me."

Taylor's lips twitched, ever so slightly. "That's all right, Commander. I'll wait outside. I think it's best you not go around alone." His tone and the quick look he shot the admiral as he moved away was plenty retaliation for Anderson's earlier remark. The fact Anderson wasn't entirely sure Shepard would be safe traveling alone made it sting all the more.

"How have you been, sir?" Shepard said once he'd left. She had herself under some semblance of control, all bitterness and amusement gone. She just looked tired now, and a great deal older than her years.

"Working for Udina isn't how I planned to spend my twilight years," he admitted. "Sometimes I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall."

"I know the feeling."

"Knowing the truth about Sovereign is brutal. It's nightmare stuff. Can't blame others for not wanting to believe it."

"Not to worry. When the Reapers actually get here, these days will seem like a tranquil dream," Shepard said.

Anderson winced at the truth of that. "Yes. I know how important it is, so I keep trying. Fight the good fight, huh?"

"That's all you can do." Shepard looked back out over the Presidium. "So, they really believe Sovereign was a geth ship? They aren't faking that just because I'm working with Cerberus?"

"No, they aren't faking it. I wish they were."

"Didn't they examine the wreckage? They had to see how complex Sovereign was."

"There wasn't much to look at, Shepard. Pieces of it rained all over the station. It was chaos, you saw how bad it was afterward. There were who knows how many species combing the wards for their dead."

"Yes...I remember now..."

"We secured as much of it as we could, but between the keepers and a whole lot of unauthorized salvage, there's no way to account for even half that thing. Another reason they don't want to acknowledge what Sovereign was."

"The Illusive Man told me that's how it was. I didn't want to believe him."

"You've actually met up with the Illusive Man?" Somehow, the way she said it brought home the fact she was working for them now in a way it hadn't before. It had not quite seemed real, not with how dead set she had been on stopping them every chance she got. It had been one of the things that she was known for in the months after the battle for the Citadel. Hearing that she was working with them was surreal.

"In a manner of speaking."

"He must have spent a lot of time studying you to figure out how to bring you into their fold," Anderson said, unable to keep a trace of anger from his voice.

"He had two years of pulling me back together to do it, so, yes, probably."

The acknowledgment that Cerberus had healed her appeased him a little bit, but only a little. "So you put your faith in them rather than the Alliance."

"I came here hoping I wouldn't end up having to."

Anderson didn't have an answer for that. He looked at her, taking in all the differences in her appearance and demeanor. Something about her face nagged at him, something was off besides the color, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He couldn't help but wonder if they'd spent so much effort healing her if they hadn't done something to alter her to suit their needs. Cerberus was a terrorist organization and its existence was one of the reasons the Council and the other races in general regarded humanity warily. Shepard working with them was a disaster and he couldn't help but think Udina had a point. She might be implying she didn't have a choice in the matter, but Anderson found it hard to believe. She'd made her choice and there were consequences for it. He knew how delicate the balance humanity's position was here. There were several species who had been part of Citadel space for years and still hadn't earned a place in the Spectres or on the Council. The fact humanity, the youngest species of all of them, had managed both within a fraction of that time had bred a great deal of resentment. It would only take a bit of a push to set them back. And Shepard, no matter how much he wished it otherwise, could be an outright shove in that direction.

Shepard chose that moment to glance up and caught the look on his face. She flinched, and for a moment, her expression went from tired to miserable. She turned away. "I better go, sir."

Anderson didn't stop her and couldn't think of anything to say. There was too much in between them. So he just nodded.

Shepard tried to tuck the little metal box into one of her pockets and missed, sending it clanging to the ground. Anderson stooped and picked it up for her, blinking as he caught sight of the label on the side. "Spices?" He looked at her in confusion as he handed it back.

Shepard flushed and shoved it into her pocket properly this time. "For Gardener. The mess sargent. I said I'd keep an eye out for some proper spices for him since, you know, he doesn't really get a chance to go wandering himself."

She moved for the stairs, looking embarrassed, and Anderson watched her go silently.

She never failed, absolutely never failed, to baffle him.

It wasn't until much later that Anderson realized with a jolt exactly what it was about her face that had bothered him. Her face was smooth. It wasn't unusual for Shepard to take her piercings out when she was coming to meet him or the Council but even then, you could see the holes in her ears and nostril where they went. He trusted his powers of observation, but even then he double checked over the images they had of her. There were no holes in her face or ears. They had all assumed Shepard coming back meant she had been injured and obviously Cerberus had helped her heal. Seeing that was a sharp reminder that none of them had wondered exactly how hurt she had been. The thought stayed with him long after she had gone.

* * *

"'Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads to Light'," Shepard murmured.

"What's that, Commander?" Jacob looked over at her.

"Milton. _Paradise Lost._ My, but I'm full of Biblical imagery lately."

Jacob just eyed her and wisely said nothing.

She gave him a bland smile and kept walking. She'd had intended to visit her family after getting a good omni-tool and recovering some of her things, but she was shying away from the idea now. She'd send her uncle a message first, that's what she would do. It would be better that way. She kept repeating that to herself over and over to hide the sick, irrational fear in the pit of her stomach that her family would turn away from her too. If that happened, she didn't know what she would do.

There had still been a part of her that hoped. A part that had been willing to just walk away from everything if only someone in the Alliance was ready to fight, keeping the truth from the public for now but still preparing. It had been a foolish, desperate hope that was guttered out now.

It was no wonder the Illusive Man hadn't been worried about her coming here to see the Council. He had shrugged it off as pointless, but he had to have already leaked her association with Cerberus to the right people. He had already known she would make one last ditch effort to avoid working with them. She had thought his stamping the Normandy SR-2 with Cerberus logos had been arrogance but it was simply another reminder of who had the will and ability to help her against the Collectors. With the side benefit of isolating her from everyone else she knew. He'd let her run out the leash because he knew he could pull it back anytime he wanted, playing her with expertise of a puppet-master. Without any doubt now, Cerberus was all she could rely on. God help them all.

"_I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel!"_

She stopped, blinking slowly and turning her head to where the voice had come from. There, that shop. A human one selling touristy stuff. Jacob paused, frowning. "That doesn't even sound like you."

She agreed, apparently with her death, her name was a franchise. She tried to whip up some outrage but it just wouldn't come. Jacob looked at her. "Want to have a chat with them, Commander?"

Shepard started to say yes, then the thought: _what's the point?_ drifted through her mind. She shook her head, feeling even more tired. She had the overwhelming urge to find someplace dark and quiet and just curl up there, hoping this was all a bad dream when she woke up. Since she couldn't do that, she merely kept her eyes down. She kept thinking everyone was staring at her, judging her. It wasn't true, she told herself, people saw weird things on the Citadel all the time.

"_Commander Shepard, enter the password and receive a free gift!" _

She glared at the ad terminal as she passed it. Hell, maybe she wasn't just being neurotic.

"_Got problems with collectors? Try Kasumi's credit services."_

Shepard stopped with a jerk, looking over her shoulder at the console again, narrowing her eyes.

_Kasumi Goto. Master of stealth and infiltration, skilled hacker and information specialist, operates completely off the grid, no criminal record._

_Kasumi Goto is not the most famous thief in the galaxy - she's the best. Trained in the arts of stealth and infiltration, she has "acquired" artifacts and information from all over the galaxy and yet maintains a completely clean criminal record. _

A woman's face, hooded so half of it was shrouded in darkness, appeared on the terminal as Shepard approached it. She smiled at Shepard, clearly a pretty young woman even with the top half of her face shadowed, with striking eyes and a line painted down the center of her lower lip. _"Please tell me your password, Commander Shepard." _Now that she was actually focusing on her voice, she could hear the hint of amusement in it.

"Silence is golden." She repeated the phrase given to her in Kasumi Goto's dossier.

The woman's image smiled. _"Good to finally meet you, Commander Shepard. Kasumi Goto. I'm a fan."_

Shepard's lips twitched involuntarily into an amused smile. "Pleasure's all mine, Ms. Goto. Is this what you do in your spare time?" Where _was _she? Obviously she was transmitting this from somewhere. Shepard shot a quick look around but couldn't pick out anything.

"_I'm the best thief in the business. Not the most famous. Need to watch my step to keep it that way. I also needed to make sure all of this was legit. And I have no doubts now. You're the real Commander Shepard."_

"Glad someone is sure about that. I keep wondering, myself."

"_There's a certain...aura about you," _Kasumi said. _"Like you've seen things no one else has."_

"I..well, okay, I suppose I have."

"_Even without knowing what you look like, I knew it was you."_

Shepard honestly couldn't tell if she was having her on. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jacob looking around, clearly trying to pinpoint where the thief was as well. "Has Cerberus filled you in on what we're doing?"

"_Honestly, I'm shocked they didn't come to see me sooner. My fault for being hard to find, I guess."_

"Well, welcome aboard finally then. Are you ready to go?"

"_I travel light. I've already slipped my things aboard your ship."_

"What? There's no way," Jacob said, his brows furrowing. Shepard was startled into a laugh.

Before Jacob could ask anything, Kasumi continued, _"I'm really glad you're helping me out with the heist. Can't wait to see how you look in formal wear."_

"I look awful. Putting me in heels is like putting an elephant on stilts. Wait, what are you talking about?" She gave Jacob a confused look and he shrugged helplessly, clearly as out of the loop as she was.

"_They didn't tell you? And they call me secretive." _Kasumi shook her head on screen. _"I'm looking for my old partner's graybox. A man named Donovan Hock took it, and I'm planning to get it back."_

"What's a graybox?"

"_It's a neural implant. Illegal in most places. Stores memories, thoughts...secret codes, illicit information. This one in particular belonged to my partner, Keiji Okuda. We worked together for a long time, before Hock killed him."_

"I'm sorry. I guess that means we'll just have to get that graybox away from him, doesn't it?"

"_It'll be fun. If we're lucky, you won't even have to draw your gun."_

"Aw."

Kasumi laughed and the terminal suddenly went blank. A voice spoke from above and behind them and she and Jacob spun around to see a hooded figure standing on a platform above them. "We should probably wrap this up. You look pretty silly standing there talking to an advertisement." The woman gave her a saucy little salute. "See you on the ship, Shepard." Even as she turned and walked away, Shepard saw her form flash and spark and vanish.

They stared thoughtfully at the spot for a moment. Jacob gave her an uncertain glance and she shrugged, not bothering to hide her amusement. "The woman knows how to make an entrance."

* * *

"I'm sorry, I really must insist you give me the reason you're here or get away from the ship," Miranda said again, crossing her arms over her chest and giving the four men a cold glare. It seemed to bounce of their composed faces and rigidly standing forms. The one who seemed to be in charge merely gave a single shake of his head. "We were told to only speak to Shepard herself. Admiral's orders."

Typical Alliance, Miranda thought, exasperated. "Look..."

"Problem, Ms. Lawson?"

Miranda wasn't sure if she was annoyed or happy that Shepard arrived at that particular moment. "These men insist on speaking to you."

Shepard looked over, taking in the four soldiers, three men and one woman, and the crate they were standing around. As one, all four of them turned and saluted. Shepard looked startled by the action, but the leader was already stepping forward. "Commander Shepard. We've orders from Admiral Hackett to leave this with you. He asked that you read this first." He held out a datapad to her.

Shepard took it, reading the contents of it silently. Her expression shifted from confused to grave as she read and by the time she finished, she was nodding. She looked up and gave the leader a nod of understanding. "Bring it aboard."


	8. The Normandy's Commander

"...for a while now, and I'm taking a look back at past entries in this journal...how blind I was at the time. I came on this ship firmly believing that humanity was alone in the galaxy...Shepard brought all these aliens on board, and there's no way we could have accomplished what we did without them...I am proud to say...die for any member of this crew, regardless of what world they were born on."

Dr. Chakwas stood and listened as Shepard read what could make out from the datapad she had found in the rubble, her voice quiet. "I always knew Pressly was less rigid than he let on," Chakwas murmured.

Shepard didn't answer. She laid the datapad in a box at her feet, standing up and wrapping her coat more tightly around her. Alchera was a desolate place, icy and dead, and the cold winds clawed at her, swirling her ragged hair around her pale face.

She looked like a ghost herself, standing among the wreckage of the Normandy SR-1.

Chakwas shivered, pulling her own coat around her and looking around. This had been the CIC deck once. If they went a few feet further, they would come across Joker's chair. They hadn't been able to convince Joker to come along. He would have been able to do it physically if he was careful and stayed around the shuttle, but the truth was, he simply hadn't wanted to see the crash site.

In truth, Chakwas hadn't really wanted to see it, herself. But her sense of duty dictated she be here. To stand witness.

Shepard moved among the wreckage, looking through it carefully. More items joined the datapad in the box. She finally circled back to Chakwas and made a motion with her head. "I'm going to circle around the edge of the area."

The doctor nodded. "I think I'll stay here."

Shepard hesitated, a look passing across her face that reminded Chakwas very much of the woman she'd been two years ago. "There's no life signs or mechanical ones, but if anything happens..."

"I've got your comm, Commander," Chakwas said, both irritated and touched she felt the need to look after her.

Shepard hesitated for a second longer, then she nodded and moved away, circling around the frozen remains of the Mako. Chakwas saw her head turn to look at it even as she walked, didn't doubt for a second she stopped to study it once she was around the other side. That Mako was as much a participant in their adventures as the people who had ridden in it.

The doctor moved quietly through the ruins, hearing only the wind as it whistled through twisted metal and broken rock. Once in a while, she came across some memento: a dogtag, a piece of jewelry or the remains of an electronic piece, and gathered it up to be added to the box.

It wasn't until she made her second round from the shuttle, exploring smaller areas she had overlooked, that her foot hit something half buried in the snow. She stooped to pick it up and felt an odd stutter in her chest. It was a helmet, horribly burnt, but recognizable. She knew who it belonged to even before she brushed aside ash and snow to reveal the N7 logo branded on it.

* * *

Counting Ashley Williams and Navigator Pressly, there had been twenty two souls lost with the Normandy SR-1. Twenty three, if you counted Shepard, but as she was walking among these ruins and none of the others could, she didn't deserve to be held up in honor along with the rest.

The flashes of memory came slower than they had been lately. Garrus and Howard working on the Mako. Ash passed out on the floor after Wrex had dared her to try ryncol. Kaidan in the copilot's seat beside Joker's with Nihlus- the Spectre who had come to evaluate her on that fateful shakedown run to Eden Prime -standing behind them. She saw faces and could put a name to each one even without the list. Marcus Grieco, Amina Waaberi, Hector Emerson...the list of the lost, added onto the names scrawled in her memory. Addison Chase, who was a month away from getting married when the Normandy went down; Raymond Tanaka, who had a sweet tooth to do a three year old proud and kept a hidden stash of real chocolate; Alexi Dubyansky, one of the engineers. Who'd, she was pretty sure, had himself a crush on Tali.

Like Chakwas, she kept an eye out for anything that could be sent back to the families who hadn't been able to bury the bodies of their loved ones.

Memories, memories, so wrapped up in who she had been and who she was now, it had consumed her.

All these dead from her past and the dying now here in the present. The colonists. If they were dying. Who knew what the Collectors were doing to them? She closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh, her breath drifting white up into the air.

Anderson's words drifted through her mind from so long ago, right before she'd headed out to hunt Saren down, standing in front of the Normandy and answering her question about why he'd chosen her, of all people, seemingly the worst person to be XO of the Alliances' newest ship. _"You laid your life on the line once to save children that weren't from any of the colonies...who weren't even human. I say the same thing then as I said when I was considering you; if you were willing to do that, what would you be willing to do to save your crew? To save the galaxy itself?"_

_Anything._

That word had gone unspoken between them but it had hovered in the air. At the time, it had been easy to think. Now, she was starting to understand the weight of that one word. The colonists. She had the means to help them. The means to maybe figure out what exactly the Reapers were doing, if she was willing to give up her pride. Work fully with an organization she continued to despise and certainly didn't believe in. How much was it worth to save a few lives?

_Anything._

She caught a glimpse of something in the snow and bent to dig it free. Her breath hitched in her chest. It was a polished stone chess-piece, burnt a little, but still recognizable. Howard, who had not died on the Normandy but still haunted her as much as if he had, had owned a prized chess board of natural wood. They would sit and play with two boards at once, she and Howard. She'd never beat him, but the fun was in the game. She ran her thumb over the scarred, pitted stone piece, wondering how it had gotten here. The black queen.

She had circled around and come to the hull. The name Normandy was visible even through the ice piled up around it. She was still standing there when she heard Dr. Chakwas come up behind her. "'It little profits that an idle king by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.'"

"Ashley quoted some of that poem to me too, a couple of times," Chakwas said. "She had a lovely voice for it."

"Her father took a recording of her reciting it for him every time he sailed out," Shepard recalled.

She turned to look at the doctor, standing with a platform hovering beside her. Shepard looked at the monument set on the platform. She was already nodding. The monument, with the hull set behind it...yes, that would do for visitors if and when they actually came to see this place. She met Chakwas' eyes. "Here?"

The doctor nodded. "Here."

* * *

A half hour later they were on the shuttle, heading back. Shepard was holding her burnt out helmet in her lap, looking down at it. The doctor leaned back in her seat as they approached the ship and frowned suddenly as she remembered something. "Serrice Ice Brandy."

Shepard looked over at her questioningly.

"I had a bottle of it on the Normandy. Was saving it for a special occasion. I wonder if they even make it anymore, I haven't seen any."

Shepard gave her a bland look that didn't hide the mischievous sparkle in her eye. "Shall we go back and see if we can find it?"

"Only if _you_ promise to test drink it beforehand, Commander."

Shepard smirked, counting down as they docked. Chakwas watched her out of the corner of her eye. Nothing about her had changed, but she seemed to have settled in some way. She had the same look she'd had when she was focused on finding Saren. She hid a smile and felt some of the worry that had been twisted up in the back of her own mind loosen a bit. There was always the question: had they _really _gotten her back? For the first time, she was certain.

Commander Shepard stepped onto the Normandy SR-2, and Chakwas followed.

* * *

Admiral Hackett sat at his desk, studying the contents of the box resting on it, sifting through the items within. Shepard had labeled as many things as she could recognize. Navigator Charles Pressly's datapad, Addison Chase's engagement ring, Orden Laflamme's dog tags, debris that was all that was left of so many lives. Hopefully, it would be enough to lay some spirits and old hurts to rest. She'd also included a picture of the monument where she'd placed it. He studied it for a moment. That was a good choice, he decided, approving of the placement. He was pleased she'd gone down to do it so quickly, had half expected her to refuse. No one was quite certain what to expect of Shepard anymore.

The Admiral turned back to his console, studying the message there.

_From: Major Caleb Antella_

_To: Admiral Steven Hacket_

_Subject: Taking Action on Commander Shepard's Return_

_Sir,_

_We've confirmed sightings of Commander Shepard, and that the Commander is now working for the terrorist organization Cerberus. Several Alliance officials have let it be known that they consider it crucial that we interrogate humanity's first Spectre on her apparent desertion of the Alliance and the Citadel. If we bring Shepard in now, we can gather an account of the Commander's past two years without being pressured by the galactic media to leak potentially sensitive data. In light of this, I am officially requesting that you rescind your orders against Alliance contact with Shepard._

_Rest assured our department is dedicated to the Commander's safety. Provided that Shepard is cooperative in furnishing us with a detailed report of her previous whereabouts and current work for Cerberus, we anticipate releasing her from Alliance Custody no later than five to seven months from acquisition._

_Respectfully awaiting your reply,_

_Major Antella_

_Department of Internal Naval Affairs _

Hackett tapped his fingers against the desk and finally replied to it, short and to the point:

_Major Antella:_

_Request denied._

_Hackett _

* * *

The winds of Alchera continued to whistle through the wreckage of the Normandy. What little light passed through the grey sky seemed to illuminate the statue of bronze placed before the hull, a graceful arch curving up toward the sky, topped by a small figurine fashioned to look like the Normandy itself. Honoring the people that had died there.

* * *

**AN: **Shepard is quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson's _Ulysses_.


	9. Omega's Hero

_Her door was open. It reminded him of how she always kept her office door open on the Normandy. He wasn't quite sure he liked it here and now, it made him jumpy, probably because she was injured. _

_Shepard was stretched out on her couch, wearing a long dress that left her shoulders and arms bare and was such a bizarre mix of patterns and colors he was afraid it would give him a headache if he looked at it too long. The metal cast clamped around her arm and the bandage around her head seemed even more grim by comparison. The dress also left the scar on her neck and shoulder completely exposed for probably the first time since he'd known her. A tablet was balanced on one knee, the stylus dangling from the fingers of her free hand. She looked around as he stepped in and smiled. "Hey, Garrus."_

_He waved to tell her to stay put when she started to rise and she pointed at the collection of bottles on the counter. She'd taken to having a bottle or two of dextro based liquor for him and Tali there and he spotted a bottle of Palaven brandy amongst them. "There's water in the fridge too," she said, looking back at the screen on the wall._

_He grabbed a bottle of water and walked into the main room, following her gaze to the screen. And stared, trying to make out exactly what the hell he was looking at. "That's a...piano, right?"_

"_Uh huh."_

"_It's a musical instrument."_

"_That it is."_

"_It doesn't have a mouth. Or a digestive system. It's an inanimate object."_

"_In general, yes."_

"_They don't eat people."_

"_It's an evil piano."_

_He gave her a sharp look, taking in the way she was intently studying the screen and the underlaying laughter in her tone. "You're making fun of me," he accused._

"_Me?" She turned her head to look at him, grinning. _

_He shook his head, more amused than anything. "If you watch vids made up of nothing but chaotic violence, it's no wonder you're crazy."_

"_You shush, or I'll put on the alien invasion one where the aliens can't get through wooden doors and are defeated by water."_

_He looked at the bottle in his hand and Shepard laughed. "I have a couple volumes of Asari Confessions, want me to put that on?"_

"_Shepard." His voice dropped to a growl, his mandibles drawing tight against his jaw in embarrassment. He couldn't help it. Even though he wasn't on the Normandy anymore, he still saw her as a commanding officer. True, Shepard had never been big on formalities but that kind of casual teasing that seemed to come as naturally to her as breathing still had the power to fluster him. Which she knew all too well, damn her. _

_For his sake, she stopped the strange movie and changed it over to the news channel, which was running a vid of Donnel Udina's speech accepting the role of the human Councilor. "Ugh."_

"_I hear that was the Council's reaction too," Garrus commented._

"_Yeah, and they can't switch him off." Shepard flipped through channels idly until she reached a music one. Vaenia's newest video played across the screen, all soothing harmonics and shifting colors. _

_Shepard looked over at him. "I keep seeing vid updates about repairs and shifting through the rubble." _

_Garrus winced. "We're just now starting to get an idea of what was damaged and getting missing people...or bodies...back to their families."_

_Shepard set the stylus down and reached over, laying a hand on his arm. "It's taking its toll on you."_

"_It's hard," he agreed, seeing no reason to hide it. The death toll from the battle taking out the geth and bringing Sovereign down had been bad enough even before they had started sorting through the Citadel. Digging out the bodies on the Citadel and dealing with frantic people searching for their loved ones had fallen to C-sec while the Council and diplomats tried to deal with the fear and anger of the rest of the galaxy, assuring everyone that the threat had passed._

_Shepard leaned back. "I wish I could help. I've been helping unscramble some of the tech in the Presidium, but..." She glared at the cast on her arm. She'd taken a bad hit when the pieces of Sovereign had crashed into the Presidium. It hadn't helped that Saren- what was left of him -had been slamming her around a few minutes beforehand. The fracture in her arm was easily repaired, but she had also taken several blows to the head, which was what had put her out of commission for the past couple weeks. "The Normandy is almost repaired, this," she tapped the cast, "comes off next week and they're pretty sure my brain isn't going to leak out of my ears. But we already have orders to ship out once ship and crew are mended." _

"_So soon?" He was surprised. The Alliance had been flaunting Shepard as a symbol every chance they got, he was certain Udina would want to keep her around for a while now that he was Councilor. _

"_Yeah. There's this formal something or other I gotta go to, then we're off."_

_The sour note in her voice made him chuckle. "Couldn't squirm out of it, huh?" Shepard was infamous for dodging formal gatherings of any kind. _

"_They got Anderson to make me promise."_

"_Ah."_

"_I didn't promise how long I'd stay though." _

"_You'd think they would know better than to give you any opening like that."_

_She nudged him. "The Council wants us to track down some of the geth and the last of Saren's followers. There's a couple of Cerberus outposts we missed along the way."_

"_Aren't most of them dead? That push toward the Citadel was pretty much everything Saren- or Sovereign rather -had."_

"_That's what I told them too, but they still want to make sure." She looked away, her brow furrowing. "They don't like talking about Sovereign." _

_Garrus' gaze was drawn, involuntarily, toward the wall where she had several drawings of her vision tacked up. A sharp reminder that Sovereign had been only _one_ Reaper. "Well, everyone is focused on pulling the Citadel back together at the moment."_

"_I guess."_

"_Everyone wants things to go back to normal," he said quietly. "I wonder if that's possible. I keep looking around and wondering how anything can be like it was before."_

"_I know."_

"_There's a part of me that would like to get away from it, just turn away and focus on geth or something far away from here."_

_Shepard turned her head to meet his gaze. "You have a standing invitation on any ship or squad I'm in command of, Garrus. You know that."_

_He did. And it made everything somehow more bearable to know that. "But I couldn't live with myself if I just walked away. Plus, they're starting to get an idea of when they're going to start Spectre special training again."_

_Shepard smiled at him. "Good. You'll make a better Spectre than I could ever be, Garrus."_

_He scoffed. "You're the first human Spectre whose first assignment culminated in saving the galaxy, Shepard. Kind of hard to beat."_

"_Well, Sovereign has a whole bunch of friends on the way. That'll give you a few opportunities."_

_She said it lightly, but it was still a sobering thought. "I haven't forgotten, Shepard. It's one of the reasons I want to get started. One more Spectre can't hurt in that fight, can it?"_

"_One more Spectre, my ass. You're gonna be _the _Spectre and the Reapers will flee back into the darkness, squealing."_

_That image had him laughing. "You hardly need me to do that, Shepard."_

"_Hey." She nudged him again. "There's no Shepard without Vakarian, eh? So you better step up to that platform and receive Spectre status soon."_

Garrus studied the silvery oval against his palm, murmuring those words to himself, the pounding music of Afterlife just a thrum in the background.

_No Shepard without Vakarian. _At the time, those words had produced an odd twist of warmth in the pit of him. Now they were a cruel mockery. Now there was no Shepard at all. Only traces of her. Even here, on Omega. He hadn't heard her name much, but the name Benjamin Creed had come up once in a while. Her father.

He'd known Shepard hated Omega because she had told him so, but he'd assumed it was simply because it was a cesspool of slavers and people exploiting the weak. Two things that Shepard _highly _disapproved of.

He closed his hand around the St. Jude medal. Not for the first time, he wondered what she would have thought of all he'd done here. He liked to think she would be proud, although she probably would have cautioned him about reaching too far. _You can't save everyone, you just do the best you can from situation to situation, _she'd said to him once. It was one of the things he actively disagreed with her on. Shepard had a tendency to think very widely. It came, he guessed, from having to save the galaxy as a whole. Looking at it that way, he could see why she didn't think you could focus on saving everybody.

But if you narrowed things down...say to purging one place, like Omega...

That thought brought him back to the reason he'd been brooding in the first place and the questions he still didn't have answers for. He growled softly.

"You keep staring at that thing and someone is going to ask you if you want confession to ease your troubled soul," Butler said, easing onto the stool next to him.

"Would they want to hear it, though, I wonder?" Garrus said sardonically.

"Probably not." Butler waited until he had a drink in his hand before speaking again. "You can't blame them, Garrus. For wanting a life beyond the fighting."

Garrus stared ahead. Nothing that they did was for the money, but funds had started building up. It had sent a thrill of excitement through him when he'd started taking notice of it. More money, more ways to get to areas that were thought to be impenetrable. They could hit the people at the top where they thought they were safest. He'd already proven that. He'd almost managed to kill Tarak, the leader of the Blue Suns, in his own home because he'd had the proper resources.

But while he'd never looked beyond the battle, some of the others had. They spoke of settling down, content to keep at least one small corner of Omega safe and hope influence spread from there. Butler had been a security consultant before he'd joined up, so he understood about being hamstrung by rules. He also had a wife and a child, so he understood having a life outside taking down Omega's criminals. Fighting for reasons other than because it was the right thing to do. Fighting injustice had always been enough for Garrus in and of itself. It was hard for him to understand not wanting to do it. "We could hit the gangs so hard they'll never recover," he finally said, his voice quiet. "Not just inconvenience them, Butler. Cripple them."

Coming from anyone else, that would have been idiocy. The gangs were reality on Omega. There were no police, no crime fighters, nothing except the ever shifting power games and rivalries between smaller gangs, and above them the major ones: the Blue Suns, the Blood Pack, and Eclipse. And above them all was the ever present, unwavering figure of Aria T'Loak. Everyone else just had to make do with what they could.

That had been true of Omega for as long as James Butler had known it. Then Garrus had shown up out of nowhere and just sort of casually started plowing his way through that set power structure. If he saw someone getting robbed, or a woman getting molested, or a kid getting shaken down, or someone getting harassed just for the sport of it, he stopped it. And stopped it _cold_; Garrus was one of the best fighters Butler had ever met and he was _the _best shot with any gun you put in his hands. It didn't matter how well connected the one doing it was, the man who soon became known to anyone outside the squad as Archangel didn't give a damn. That ruthless idealism was met by the gangs and thugs of Omega first with condescension, then indignation, then rage...and fear. If he'd just been a good fighter, it would not have been so big a deal, but he was a leader as well and he had a talent for messing with the gangs _without _messing with Aria, which took considerable talent. First Sidonis had joined him, and one by one, the rest of them had started joining up too. Because Garrus didn't bother with lecturing or speeches about how Omega needed to be cleaned up. He just did it.

It was kind of hard to tell a man something was impossible when he was doing it.

He'd learned that particular method from Shepard, he'd said on one of the rare occasions he would speak of her. It had taken them a while after learning his real name to realize he was the turian often seen on the vids with that long legged, tattoo bedecked vixen that had taken the galaxy by storm. Of course they were all curious about that particular adventure...he'd actually _been _there, after all. But getting him to talk about Shepard directly was a hard thing, other than mentioning her abilities as a commanding officer.

"If he really expects us to believe he only saw her as a commanding officer, the only one he's fooling is himself," Nalah, his wife, had commented once.

With all that in mind, Butler found it hard to say the placating words that he'd had saved up. Sure, settling down, living well, was a good thing to focus on, but wasn't it worth the risk to save a few more lives, make things better for the people who needed it? The people of Omega had never truly had someone to champion them before and Butler had the distinct impression that it wasn't just the interrupted shipments and the loss of credits that was genuinely scaring the gangs; it was the fact that people were sitting up and paying attention. If a newcomer could come out of nowhere and throw a wrench in the rusted machine that had run Omega for so long, why not them?

Even if they wanted to stop fighting, it was hard to put that into words in the face of Garrus' determination. It was one of the things that had drawn them all to him in the first place.

Butler swirled the whiskey in his glass around. "Eh. I guess things will just work out as they will."

Garrus looked at him, smiling for the first time. "Now you sound like Shepard."

Butler gave him a sly smile. "Considering how obsessive you are about her, I'll take that as a compliment."

Garrus muttered something incoherent. Butler and Sidonis especially enjoyed embarrassing him by making innuendos about his relationship with Shepard. Which was kind of funny, considering how much enjoyment Shepard herself had gotten out of poking fun at him. A fitting tribute to her memory, he thought with sour amusement at himself.

_Nice, since _you _haven't made any real tribute to her memory, _a sly voice in his head said. _It will be nice for Omega to be all cleaned up and shiny right in time for the Reapers to come and pluck it up. Right, Vakarian? Much easier to do that than actually work against them. _

His hand tightened around Shepard's medal again. Contrary to popular belief, he actually thought about the Reapers all the time. The trouble was no one else wanted to. He wanted to do something, of course he did, but he didn't know what to _do_.

He'd tried. After Liara disappeared from Citadel Space, he'd tried on his own. He'd researched into Saren's activities, tried to learn how and where he had found Sovereign, anything, anything at all that would have given him some kind of thread to follow. It was a dead end. Vigil, the VI on Ilos that had told them about the Reapers, was gone, its power run out. Saren was gone. Shepard was gone. The path to figuring out what to do about the Reapers was one he couldn't even find, much less navigate.

_Except the Collectors. _

He admitted they had been at the back of his mind ever since Weaver had mentioned hearing rumors about them attacking human colonies. There was nothing logical to connect the Reapers to the Collectors. Just that they were both creepy species that were supposedly myths who crawled out of dark places and did horrible things to people.

_Even if they have something to do with the Reapers, what could you do about it, Vakarian?_ Battling crime on Omega was one thing, going after one of the most mysterious species in the galaxy was another thing entirely.

He looked down at Shepard's medal again. Still...

"You know what's wrong with Sidonis lately? He's brooding all the time." Butler was asking as Garrus was drawn out of his own thoughts.

An annoyed female voice behind them had him turning his head to watch a fat human male, swaying and obviously drunk, harassing one of the asari waitresses. She was striding toward Garrus and Butler in attempt to get away from him, her haughty annoyance not quite shielding the genuine nervousness in her eyes. He didn't blame her, the look on the man's face was mean and vicious and it would go badly for her if he managed to get her somewhere alone. "Maybe he's just tired of fighting, like some of the others."

"He's about as likely to get tired of that as you are," Butler snorted.

"So maybe he's worried we'll run out of stuff to fight." Garrus tossed him a grin. "I worry about that sometimes too, you know." The asari passed him, the fat man in leering pursuit, so focused on her lithe form, he didn't notice Garrus sticking a foot out. The man tripped over it and tumbled to the floor with a crash, making Butler and several other patrons laugh derisively and the asari send Garrus a sultry smile of thanks as she slipped away.

The man struggled to his feet, snarling drunkenly, pawing at his belt, probably for a knife. He didn't get a chance to draw it, whatever it was, due to the short armed jab that smashed his nose back against his face and sent him stumbling backwards again. Garrus hurried him along his backward fall with a sharp kick in the groin to discourage him from going after any other woman tonight and turned back to the bar as the man lay sprawled on the floor.

Butler shook his head. "That was like watching a blind pyjak try to take on a varren. What was that you said about running out of things to fight?"

Garrus simply knocked the rest of his drink back, tucking the St. Jude medal safely away. Not while Omega existed.

* * *

**AN:** A lot of Garrus's thoughts in this chapter were inspired by his Homeworlds comic, which you should definitely check out, as it is awesome.


	10. Perfection

_Dr. Okeer. Millennia of combat and strategic experience. Rumored familiarity with Collector technology._

_A brilliant and brutal krogan warlord who fought in the Krogan Rebellions, Dr. Okeer has become obsessed with saving the krogan people from the genophage and is believed to have contacted the Collectors in an attempt to gain technology to that end. He is currently in a Blue Suns camp on Korlus, though the nature of his relationship with the mercenary group is unknown._

* * *

Miranda sat in her office, staring at her screen as she tried to write up her report to The Illusive Man. For the third time, she brought up an image from the port cargo hold cameras, staring at the tube there. She was distracted, and not just because she didn't exactly have good news. They had a krogan on board now, but not the one they were looking for. Oh, and Shepard was swinging back and forth between impressive and bloody terrifying.

Shepard had a variety of perfectly logical reasons for wanting to go to Korlus first. It was a shorter jaunt from their current position than Omega, so they might as well go there along the way, and while Mordin Solus was a brilliant scientist, Okeer had actually had contact with the Collectors. Although in the end, he had claimed he didn't know anything about the colony abductions.

All perfectly legitimate points and Miranda wasn't buying any of them. Not for the first time, she cursed the Illusive Man for not allowing her to implant something into Shepard's brain that would allow them to have at least a modicum of control over her behavior and keep her on track for their mission.

At first, she would have chalked Shepard choosing to go for the krogan over suggestions otherwise up to simple defiance of her and the Illusive Man. But after studying how Shepard avoided talking about the recruitments in that particular area, she now thought it might be much more simple than that.

Shepard was afraid of Omega.

And why was that? Miranda couldn't help but wonder. Psychology was not her best point, but Shepard's avoidance of Omega clearly traced back to the blank period between the destruction of Mindoir and when she'd appeared on Earth and murdered two members of a slaving ring before turning herself in. So much of what Shepard was traced back to that period, and there was little to no information on her activities during that time. If they were taking her back into an area that had such an adverse effect on her, Miranda would have felt much better knowing why that was. The better to observe and take action to protect their investment. It was possible the Illusive Man knew more than he had told her, in which case Miranda was even more frustrated. They still had no idea what the long term effects of waking her up so early would be. Physically, she was progressing well, but Miranda was having serious doubts about her mental capabilities.

The asari they'd come across on the way to Okeer's lab, for example. Thanoptis. She knew the name from reports on Saren's attempt to cure the genophage and create a krogan army. She'd spoken to Shepard with familiarity, defending her presence there by stating she wasn't wasting the second chance Shepard had given her. She was designing mental imprinting for Okeer's tank bred krogan. She'd surprised them by informing them Okeer wasn't, in fact, trying to find a cure for the genophage but what he was doing, she wasn't sure. Then she had moved toward the door, obviously well aware of how Shepard worked and having no intention of sticking around. Shepard had not tried to stop her, watching her walk to the door, her head cocked on one side almost quizzically.

Then she'd shot her in the back of the head.

Miranda had, unfortunately, been at just the right angle to see the asari's face explode outward before she hit the ground. Jacob had yelled in shock and even Kasumi had jumped, startled. Shepard had turned away from the asari's body and their incredulous stares to continue on to the lab, appearing completely unperturbed and apparently not feeling the need to explain why she'd just gunned down a defenseless woman in cold blood.

She should have known. Shepard had been almost single-mindedly focused on the mission since they'd left the old Normandy's crash site, even if she wasn't immediately going in the direction Miranda thought the most logical. Kasumi Goto was a good influence over her, they responded well to each other. Too well, in fact, as they shared a sense of humor Miranda found annoying. Still, she thought seeing Shepard laughing with honest humor was a good sign.

She should have known better than to assume Shepard's emotions had evened out completely. She'd been fine when they arrived at the Blue Suns base Okeer had been hiding in, making fun of the hysterical commands coming over the loudspeakers from the Blue Suns commander, leading the way up to the lab and taking down enemies with all the skill that they could have hoped for. It was only a matter of time before one of the quirks manifested itself, like her hearing going strange as it had on the Citadel and on and off since Alchera.

But even if she'd been expecting it, gunning Thanoptis down that way was a move was so out of character for Shepard, it was alarming. But Miranda had not had time to try and question her, because Okeer had been waiting for them.

Miranda looked at the tube in the cargo hold again.

She couldn't count the number of krogan rejects from Okeer's lab that they had taken out on their way to disable the Blue Suns and take out Commander Jedore; the price demanded by the krogan scientist for his cooperation. Any other day, this would not have bothered Miranda. Getting that idiotic bitch to stop her babbling over the loudspeakers would have been worth killing a hundred krogan, in her estimation. Okeer had been playing Jedore and the Blue Suns. Oh, he'd been giving them a krogan army: bred in tanks in his lab like Saren's army had been, given rudimentary education via Thanoptis's learning programs, and sent off to be fodder for the Blue Suns. But that hadn't been his goal, nor, as the asari had said, was curing the genophage. No, those tank bred krogan had been sacrificed in the name of Okeer's true goal, which now rested in that tube in the cargo hold.

Perfection. How many krogan had he created? Hundreds? Thousands? And of all of them, this was the only one he thought had any value. Centuries of browbeating his people and selling them out to the Collectors until the krogan on Tuchanka couldn't stomach it anymore and sent him away. Centuries of perfecting his methods and research all for this one single krogan as his legacy. This one bred from the genes up and educated before it even woke to be perfect, to revitalize the krogan race.

Miranda glanced at the screen again and dropped her gaze to her hands. They were beautiful hands, slim and capable with long, tapered fingers. They did the work of a scientist with the grace of an artist. The perfect hands to carry out the workings of an extraordinary mind.

_I already created you with the tools for perfection, _a voice whispered from her memories. _You have _every_ advantage. You have no excuse not to make use of them._

Would this krogan be everything Okeer worked for? They had no way of knowing until Shepard decided whether or not she was going to wake him up. Was he this perfect warrior? Her own little hands could shoot a mech's head off from 100 yards, her human mind could crush it with her biotics. She was smarter, more accomplished, healed faster, would probably live longer. Would this perfect krogan be capable of the same?

And standing between them was Miranda's greatest accomplishment: a woman she had literally brought back from the dead. A woman born from a drug addict and a criminal, whose biotic abilities and hell, even her training, had come from pure circumstance...who the Illusive Man had poured billions of credits into bringing back.

Scowling, Miranda shook herself away from her thoughts, pushing back and typing up a terse, to the point report for her boss. Okeer dead, the Blue Suns scattered, they were waiting for Shepard to decide on the creature's fate, and most likely were headed to Omega next. She added some choice words on Shepard's visible reluctance to go there, backed by Kelly's observations, and sent it through, stretching to get the kinks out of her neck.

She was about to get up when a soft alarm she'd asked EDI to give her went off and she looked at the port cargo hold screen again. She started swearing under her breath. "Dammit, Shepard."

* * *

So many of her friendships started out like this.

Shepard had a second to reflect on this as she recovered from the initial shock of watching the krogan in the tube stumble to the floor to being slammed up against the wall like a rag doll with an arm across her throat a second later. Gray eyes started into pale blue...she'd never seen blue eyes on a krogan.

"Human. Female," Okeer's perfect tank baby rumbled at her. "Before you die, I need a name."

_When you're up close and personal with one of us, Shepard, you go for the head or one of the hearts. Taking out one heart won't kill, but it'll slow him down._ Wrex's voice echoed through her head as she cocked the pistol in her hand and shifted it so the muzzle was aimed at a spot on the krogan's chest, just beneath his arm. And hoped, for Wrex and his people's sake, that she didn't have to use it.

"Shepard. Commander Shepard," she managed to choke out.

"Not your name. Mine," the krogan said with a hint of impatience. "I am trained. I know things, but the tank...Okeer couldn't implant connection. His words are hollow." There was a strange flicker in his eyes that Shepard recognized all too well. "Warlord, legacy, grunt. "Grunt" was among the last. It has no meaning. It'll do."

Shepard felt hysterical laughter bubble up through her and bit it back, wondering what Okeer would have thought of that. The krogan focused on her once more. "I am Grunt. If you are worthy of your command, prove your strength and try to destroy me."

Shepard raised an eyebrow, striving for intimidation. Not easy to do when your breath was whistling out of your throat. "You want me to kill you?" Well, try to, but there was no reason to let him know that.

Grunt narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Want? I do what I am meant to- fight and reveal the strongest. Nothing in the tank ever asked what I want." He shook his head. "I feel nothing for Okeer's clan or his enemies. That imprint failed. He has failed. Without a reason that is mine, one fight is as good as any other. Might as well start with you."

Shepard bared her teeth in a grin, which clearly startled the young krogan. "Can't argue with that logic. Nice and simple and we'll all go out in a blaze of glorious pointlessness. Okeer would turn over in his grave if anyone bothered to bury him."

"Okeer is just a voice in the tank. If his imprints are true, then he created something stronger than him. So he's not worthy of me."

_I can't believe Okeer didn't see that one coming,_ Shepard thought.

"And if his hatreds aren't strong enough to compel me, they've failed, too," Grunt continued. "I feel nothing. I have no connection."

Shepard locked eyes with him again. "Killing with a purpose always trumps pointless killing, in my experience." Or, at least, it had once. "I have a good ship and a strong crew...strong clan. You'd make it stronger."

The krogan mulled this over for a moment. "If you're weak and choose weak enemies, I'll have to kill you."

"Naturally. Although don't worry about the weak enemies, trust me on that."

The krogan considered her words again. "Hmph. That's...acceptable. I'll fight for you."

"Good." Shepard deliberately glanced down to draw his attention to the pistol pressed against his armor.

Now it was Grunt's turn to grin as he released her and stepped back. "Ha! Offer one hand, but arm the other. Wise, Shepard."

"Learned it from a krogan." Good old Wrex, bless his violent, cantankerous heart. She'd learned more about the krogan in a few months with him than she had in years.

"If I find a clan, if I find what I...I want, I will be honored to eventually pit them against you," Grunt said.

Shepard nodded, taking that for the compliment it was.

Grunt seemed content to settle in the cargo hold, climbing back into his tank to rest as Shepard left. Despite her aching throat, she was well pleased. The thought of working with Okeer had not been one she was looking forward to. She was ready to turn her back on the Illusive Man before she'd turn her back on him, which was a sobering thought.

Now Grunt, on the other hand...

Grunt was definitely a wild card at the moment but hot _damn _if he couldn't be one hell of an asset. It was just a matter of making sure he killed the right people and learned when was the right time to do it.

Miranda was waiting for her, her expression one of cold disapproval. Before she could speak, Kasumi appeared out of nowhere, shutting down the cloaking device that hid her. "Well, that was interesting..."

Miranda blinked, clearly surprised she hadn't realized Kasumi was there. The thief truly was amazing, the only reason Shepard wasn't surprised was because Kasumi had told her she was keeping an eye on her before she'd gone in to wake Grunt. "Well, we've got the krogan equivalent of a hormone crazed teenager on the ship, so that's one word to describe it."

"This place gets more and more interesting every day," Kasumi said cheerfully.

Shepard returned her attention to Miranda, still walking. She really didn't want to talk to the Cerberus operative about...anything, at the moment, really. She resorted to an overwhelming pre-emptive strike, speaking calmly: "I can't think of a better place to test him out than Omega, don't you agree?"

Miranda looked at her, an odd, almost mocking gleam in her eyes, giving Shepard the impression she knew exactly what she was up to. "Whatever you think best. Commander."

"We can pick up this merc the Illusive Man was all fired up about, and the Professor and the vigilante while we're at it."

"That Archangel character sounds the most interesting out of the lot, honestly," Kasumi commented. Miranda threw her a sharp look, eyes narrowed, then glared at Shepard, who shrugged. She had not given Kasumi access to the dossiers for the people they were recruiting but she wasn't surprised Kasumi had a hold of them. She guessed Miranda still had not learned she would have to resign herself to Kasumi pretty much getting anything in the ship's databases that struck her fancy because beyond EDI, Shepard was pretty sure no one could stop her. That's what you got for hiring a master thief, she supposed. Although granted, Kasumi had her own particular brand of ethics, a distinct sense of right and wrong even if didn't align itself with the law's.

"Too bad you couldn't find out more about him," Kasumi continued. "I mean, a guy who shows up on Omega and starts attacking the gangs? And _winning_?"

"Such a person would undoubtably need to keep his anonymity," Miranda said stiffly. "That's why he's one of the _few_ people who we don't have a proper background on."

"You couldn't find Garrus, either," Shepard reminded her, turning toward the elevator. "Though that doesn't really surprise me. Stubborn, contrary, turian bastard."

Kasumi started to laugh. "Awww, that's so cute, Shep."

Shepard paused, turning to look at her. Miranda shook her head and strode away, looking disgusted with both of them. "What?"

Kasumi grinned at her. "You miss him."

Shepard started with a sharp reply, checked herself, and had to smile because that was certainly true. "God, you have no idea."

* * *

Shepard sat on the couch in her quarters later, gazing silently across the room at the water in the fish tank. She didn't have any fish and wasn't sure she wanted any. The idea of a bunch of creepy little eyes staring at her all the time made her twitchy. Or maybe that was just her permanent state of mind these days.

She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples. _There you go, Rana. I blew your brains out because I was feeling twitchy. That's rough._

Perhaps what was most disturbing was she wasn't even particularly bothered by the fact she had killed the asari. It was the fact she hadn't thought about it. She vaguely remembered thinking it was perhaps dangerous to Wrex to have someone like her running around and if she had truly wanted to make amends, she could have offered her knowledge to the krogan on Tuchanka. It had truly been on impulse that she'd brought her gun up.

Shepard pressed her fingers against her temples harder and squeezed her eyes shut until she saw gray. She had put on a good front for Miranda, though how much she had fooled the woman, she couldn't say.

Omega.

The name almost seemed to sting her brain. The last time she'd been there seemed a hundred years ago. Running from her father, herself, and the knowledge everything he'd ever told her was a lie. That he'd been funding a slaver selling children for sex and she had unwittingly helped him do it. Christ, she'd been even more of a mess then than she was now, focused with hysterical energy on taking down the main financiers of that slaving ring. She'd been caught in a rage by it, had taken joy in it. She'd taken a few of them down, not all of them, but perhaps it was a blow that had helped weaken and eventually break it. She knew it had because Wrex had told her, he'd played a part in taking it down completely.

Wrex...the krogan in general, even the worst of them...did not take kindly to people who hurt children. Probably came from having your race sterilized.

In those days, gunning someone down on impulse had been almost second nature to her.

Disturbed by that thought, Shepard opened her eyes. It was like her resurrection and working with Cerberus had stripped a vital layer away from her. Like she was caught between the hate filled child that had torn her way through the Terminus Systems in a violent frenzy and the soldier that had emerged years later. She didn't know if she was intrigued or frightened by it.

She wasn't in any state to face Omega again, but there was no time to ease into it. She had no idea if she would _ever_ be ready to face Omega again. So she would just have to go anyway.

They could put it off a little while more- there was one other person off of Omega to recruit -but what was the point? Omega was only a short jaunt away and they had three people there to recruit. Plus, she had been perfectly serious about it being a fine place to give Grunt a test run, as it were.

She had no excuse, none at all. Shepard drew in a deep breath, reaching down into whatever pool of strength rested inside her, wrapping it around herself and shoving back the nightmares and doubts into a confined space in the back of her mind. It was time to face Omega.

* * *

The batarian stared impassively at the figure in the chair before him. The turian was tied up, slumped over in the chair, his head hanging, too exhausted to even be afraid anymore. The leathery green skin of his neck, around the back of his head and beneath his eyes was mottled with bruises and his clothing hid the other hurts that had been inflicted. At first glance, it seemed impossible to hurt a turian too much with brute force, what with all the plating, but any gang in Omega knew the right places to hit someone in order to inflict maximum pain, as this unfortunate turian had found out. There was no permanent damage. Fear had been an even more potent weapon than pain.

The batarian nodded to a human in blue armor that matched his, who brought a handheld comm up to the turian. He gave them a number in a hoarse voice and the human punched it in. Everyone in the room drew in a collective breath as they waited, a stir of excitement going through them when a voice answered. The turian cleared his throat. "G-Garrus?"

"_Sidonis? Are you all right?"_

For a moment, the turian stirred and seemed ready to pull away from the comm, guilt and misery in every line of his body. The batarian stepped into his view and silently held a long tool up, the haft of it settled against his palm. He clicked a button and a long, thick needle emerged from the base, sparking with electricity. The batarian smiled as a shudder tore through the turian. It seemed he wasn't beyond fear after all. "I need you to drop whatever it is you're doing and come meet me..."


	11. The Professor

Afterlife.

The nightclub was the erratically beating heart of Omega. It rose up against the dank, heavy background of the rest of Omega, its colors seeming unnaturally bright, seeming more _alive_ than any other place on the station. It was a palace of vice, which was fitting, as it served as the throne for Omega's pirate queen.

Denali stood on the top floor of the club not far from Aria's private booth, looking down at the other levels, packed full of patrons fighting, drinking, and watching the dancers gyrating on the center stages. She gripped the railing, the only outward sign of tension she gave as she watched a batarian make his way up out of the corner of her eye, moving toward their boss with an almost sheepish look.

When he reached the booth and stood in front of Aria, Denali finally turned, shifting so she was close enough to overhear.

"….slipped past us before we realized it. She went straight to the quarantine zone and talked her way past the guard. Moklan's waiting for her if she comes back out."

"Probably infecting the rest of the station. I told you Cerberus probably had something to do with that plague," another batarian in the entourage of guards around Aria spat.

Aria remained silent, leaning back in the booth, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "No, I don't think so."

Denali had to close her eyes for a moment. Two years ago, Liara T'soni, the asari who had traveled with Arian Shepard on her hunt for Saren, had come to Omega in search of the commander's body. Therefore, it wasn't as much a surprise to her when rumors had started that Shepard was still alive.

Denali had been slower to believe it. It hurt too much to hope. She'd known Arian since she was thirteen when her bastard of a father had brought her to the Terminus Systems. Had helped her when she finally escaped from him four years later. They had been friends and occasional lovers and everything in between right up until her death. Now the rumors…

She didn't know what to believe now, but Denali did know she couldn't simply stand by and do nothing.

Aria finally made a flicking motion with her hand. "Change of plans. Have Moklan send her to me if she comes out. My curiosity is piqued now."

Denali moved away from the railing, resigning herself to waiting a little longer.

* * *

Kasumi was starting to rethink her opinion about who was the most interesting character among the dossiers. Archangel was still up there, but Dr. Mordin Solus was starting to sound equally cool.

"Damn it...damn you..."

She glanced over as the batarian Shepard was crouched next to coughed and fell back, too weak to even curse Shepard anymore.

Obviously irritated, Shepard batted the sick batarian's hand away when he tried to stop her and stuck a micro-syringe of medi-gel into his arm. "That won't cure the plague but it'll probably help."

"If he's weak enough to be taken down from it, he doesn't deserve to live," Grunt's rumble was interrupted by a harsh cough. Shepard rose and regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, and then casually rammed a larger syringe of medi-gel into his neck as he bent over. Grunt let out a very un-kroganlike yelp and glared at her. Kasumi snickered.

The sick batarian was watching Shepard with wary confusion. "You...you helped me. Why?"

The commander shrugged. "Why not? I told you, I don't know if I can find a cure for the plague, but I'm going to try. Might as well have you live to see it."

One of the things about Shepard that made you believe she could do the impossible was the casual way she approached doing so. She talked about curing the plague that had shut this district down and was killing off everyone but its human and vorcha residents like she did it every day.

"Your words sound...sincere. Maybe it's the fever, but as you said...what have I to lose?" the batarian said. That was the nice thing about being trapped in a quarentine zone with mercs on one side and a killer plague that came out of nowhere on the other: the very real possibility of certain death at any moment certainly gave you perspective.

The very confused batarian was happy to direct them to where Solus's clinic was located, especially when Shepard promised she'd ask the salarian to send someone back for him. Kasumi saw Jacob eying Shepard with curiosity and couldn't blame him for it. Shepard wasn't know for having a particular love for batarians, for obvious reasons. Of course, _no one_ really liked batarians, but before she'd joined the Normandy, Shepard had been renowned for being a scourge to batarian slavers. She'd shot an asari in cold blood, but she tried to save a dying batarian. Shepard was a strange woman. But never a boring one.

Most of the thugs they were picking their way through were from the Blue Suns or the Blood Pack. Kasumi knew about both of them, of course. She loved big gangs like that. You never felt guilty at all about stealing stuff from them.

"There's a lot more of them than I would expect in a plague zone," Jacob said as they watched Grunt take down a Blood Pack krogan with almost frightening ease despite the increasing coughs that rattled from his throat. Shepard kept frowning at him worriedly.

She glanced over at Jacob. "Actually, there's much fewer than I was expecting. I would have thought I'd see more of the humans from the Blue Suns here picking off stragglers and looting." She paused, lifting her hand to her comm as she listened to something. Her brows furrowed. "Ah. EDI says she's picking up communications between gangs about plans to deal with Archangel. Damn…come on."

"She doesn't mean the gangs working together, does she?" Kasumi scoffed.

"I don't know. Looks like we'll just have to find out once we have Dr. Solus."

The batarian they'd helped had suspected Solus had probably been some kind of special forces among the salarians due to the fact he had never come across a clinic doctor who warned off gangs by displaying the bodies of their slain comrades in front of the clinic.

Shepard liked that. It made a statement.

His dossier said he was a biological weapons expert with light weapons training from the Salarian Special Tasks Group. Having encountered that particular group before, Shepard knew that wasn't anything to scoff at.

Finding Mordin Solus turned out to be the easy part. The clinic was stuffed with shell shocked refugees and harried workers, but it was easy to pick out Solus. He was a pale skinned salarian with a plethora of impressive scars, including missing one of his horns. He flitted around the clinic, chattering to himself, making notes with his omni tool.

Convincing him to join the cause required a bit more work. For one, they had to figure out what the hell he was saying. Trying to follow his speech reminded Shepard of playing that game where someone hid a ball beneath a cup and shuffled them around then made you guess where it was. Salarians in general thought (and talked and lived) faster than anyone else in the galaxy but Mordin was a cut above the rest in that area. He'd figured out they were from Cerberus once Shepard had asked him to join up, shooting deductions one by one out loud as he looked them over and coming to that conclusion within a minute.

Mordin had become interested when she had mentioned they were after the Collectors, mentioning almost off handedly that the plague had to be engineered and the Collectors were the only ones who possessed that kind of technology. It made sense; coinciding with the fact the plague didn't kill humans. Considering what she'd seen of the Collector's technology from the footage on the colonies, she though they might be better off dead.

Before he joined, Mordin had tasked them with taking the plague cure he'd developed and distributing it throughout the district via the environmental control center. A task that was made considerably more complicated by the fact the environmental controls shut down minutes later. Apparently the Collectors had changed their minds and decided everyone ought to just die right here and now.

This, combined with the fact her temper was already honed to an edge just by being on Omega, might have made her less than diplomatic with the vorcha guarding the control center. She'd officially used up all her diplomacy convincing a group of batarians to let Mordin's assistant, a bright young man named Daniel, live. She'd kept her word and let them leave once Daniel was free, but another surge of violence had swept through her as they left and it had taken all of her control not to take them out like she had with Rana.

So it was that she and Grunt were in a similar mood by the time they reached the control center. There were big groups of vorcha keeping guard on it, just as Mordin had warned. One of them ran forward, hissing at them. "You no come here! We shut down machines, break fans! Everyone choke and die! Then Collectors make us strong!"

So they were spreading the plague for the Collectors. Little bastards. Vorcha creeped her out. They looked like monkeys bred inside a nightmare, all sharp teeth and wide, crazy eyes. It gave her no little satisfaction to let Grunt loose on them and watch him mow them down.

Jacob whistled as they moved inside, helping Grunt out from a safe distance. "Remind me to never piss him off." Mordin had cured Grunt of the plague at the clinic and the little dear seemed bound and determined to remind them how strong he was.

More Blood Pack, Shepard noted, seeing a couple of krogan in red armor among the vorcha. The Collectors must have given them some kind of cure or immunity, because none of them seemed to be effected by the plague. However, neither they or the vorcha seemed to have realized that everyone in the district choking and dying meant _everyone _in the district. Including them. Shepard could already feel the air pulling at her lungs as she breathed in and out. It left a foul aftertaste in the back of her throat.

Grunt plowed through the control center ahead of them, Kasumi fading into the shadows and attacking at random as Jacob followed Grunt and Shepard flanked him. They took out vorcha attacking Grunt from the side and larger groups of them when Grunt turned to take on one of the krogan. It went slower than Shepard would have liked, but eventually they made it to the controls. Jacob watched their backs as she and Kasumi got everything up and running again, taking a deep breath when the air started to circulate again and coughing, shaking his head. "Still tastes nasty."

"It'll take a while for the filtration to take care of that, probably," Shepard said. Personally, she thought the air on Omega was always heavy and foul, but that just could have been her. They distributed the cure per Mordin's instructions as Grunt came bounding up to them, covered in blood and looking like he was having a grand old time. He sniffed the air and huffed out a breath. "Air doesn't taste sick anymore. Guess the doctor has some use."

"What do you have against Dr. Solus?" Jacob wondered. "He just cured the plague."

"I hate salarians." Grunt tapped his head. "Programmed memories. I hate turians too!" He sounded delighted, which made Shepard snort, Jacob frown, and Kasumi edge slightly behind Shepard just in case he suddenly remembered he hated humans too.

"I wonder if the Collectors really were going to mutate the vorcha into something new and strong or if they were just going to let them all die with the rest of the district," Shepard said, looking around at the bodies scattered through out the control center.

"Don't know, but if they did keep their word, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it probably wouldn't have been quite what they thought it would," Jacob said. He looked over at her, his expression solemn. "I don't like what all this means for the colonists that have been abducted, Commander."

"Yeah…neither do I…"

* * *

"Environmental systems engaged. Airborne viral levels dropping. Patients improving. Vorcha retreating. Well done, Shepard. Thank you." Mordin Solus's fingers flew over the controls of one of his consoles and he muttered a couple of things to himself she couldn't make out.

Daniel was standing not far away, tending to a couple of patients. He looked up. "And thank you from me, as well. Those batarians would have killed me." He studied Shepard with sharp eyes. "For a second there, I thought you were going to shoot them even after they let me go."

Shepard just looked away.

Mordin turned from the console. "Merciful of you. Risky. Would have killed them, myself."

Daniel looked shocked. "Professor? How can you say that? You're a doctor. You believe in helping people."

"Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients. Sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps."

And that, Shepard thought, just about summed it up as neatly as you possibly could.

After leaving final instructions to Daniel, who would be taking over the clinic, Mordin insisted they all go through a specialized decontamination before leaving the district. Shepard had intended to drop him off at the ship to let him get settled and start going over their notes on the Collectors before looking into Archangel. She checked her stride as someone called out to her and turned to see a batarian stomping up.

"Commander?" Jacob asked quietly. Kasumi moved up to her side and Grunt moved up on the other, growling.

"Get Mordin settled and if Massani has come back from getting his bounty, then bring him out with you when you come back," Shepard said, speaking of the bounty hunter Cerberus had hired around the same time they hired Kasumi. Jacob didn't like it but he nodded and led Mordin onto the Normandy, the salarian loudly speculating that the batarian was an emissary from Aria T'Loak. Shepard was willing to bet that's what he was there for too.

The batarian stopped a few paces away and glared at her. "Welcome to Omega…Shepard."

"Evening."

The batarian crossed his arms. "We had you tagged since you entered the Terminus Systems." He paused, waiting for a response, and seemed a bit perturbed by Shepard's utter lack of surprise. "You're not as subtle as you think," he continued, digging a little.

Kasumi snorted. "Many words can be used to describe Shepard. Subtle isn't one of them."

The batarian barely spared her a glance before focusing on Shepard again. "Aria wants to know what brings a dead Spectre to Omega."

Of course.

"I suggest you go to Afterlife and present yourself."

"I've been here before, you know. Even I'm not stupid enough to cause problems or piss off Aria," Shepard said.

The batarian shook his head. "Things explode around you, Shepard. You can't blame Aria for keeping an eye on you."

He had a point, though she wasn't going to say that out loud.

"Afterlife. Now." With a rather dramatic arm wave, the batarian strode back the way he came.

* * *

They waited for Jacob to return with Zaeed Massani. EDI had suggested Afterlife as a jumping off point to find Archangel, but a little niggle of defiance and pride kept Shepard from just hopping to at Aria's order.

Shepard paused to take in the sight of the club with its gaudy lights, holographic flames burning above the doorway, and noisy crowds waiting to get in. They were waved through without even being asked to check their weapons, which Shepard judged to be a deliberate move on Aria's part. She wasn't afraid and wanted to show it.

To some, Afterlife was the real representation of Omega. Pirates and gangs tended to view Omega as a haven, a place where they were surrounded by people just like them, where they were honored for their deeds instead of hunted for them. The more romantically inclined passed through Omega considering it a place that was truly free, unbound by the hypocrisy of the bureaucrats in Citadel Space, where the strong weren't hindered by the weak, where they could be their true selves: different, better than the mindless sycophants who adhered to Council law.

To Shepard, it simply brought back memories of blood and rage and death, the smell of cigarette smoke and rot. Of children sold to the highest bidder and an entire station full of people who couldn't care less. Of close calls, barely escaping groups of men with furtive eyes who were on the constant look out for seventeen year old girls who let their guard down.

Omega was a cesspool. A rotting, stinking carcass of a meteoroid that stood as a balance to civilization, a constant reminder of what went on beneath the surface of things.

Afterlife hadn't changed a bit. She could have been walking in to the exact same scene she might have over a decade ago. That thought weighed her down.

Jacob seemed on edge, but Kasumi and Zaeed, who had both surely seen Afterlife many times before, were unimpressed. Grunt sniffed the air and looked around. "Drinking, fighting. These people all think they're krogan."

Shepard felt a smile curve her lips. Leave it to Grunt to take the mythical Afterlife down a peg.

_We don't have museums on Omega, we have Afterlife. Or maybe Afterlife can be considered a holo museum considering all the posing going on there._

It was sheer, utter willpower that kept Shepard from swaying at that amused female voice echoing through her head and kept her walking instead of stumbling. Denali. How could she have forgotten Denali? She glanced around as if the thought would conjure the woman she considered one of the few good things Omega had going for it.

There was no time to dwell on her friend, they were coming up to Aria's throne and one did not let their attention wander when in the presence of the Pirate Queen of Omega.

She stood, a tall, purple skinned asari, with her back to them, looking out over the club. She barely glanced over her shoulder as Shepard came up. "That's close enough."

Weapons were suddenly bristling from all sides, every one of them pointed toward Shepard and her people. Jacob drew his gun automatically, Grunt snarled, and she saw Zaeed's hand drop to his pistol. Shepard didn't even bat an eye, watching Aria silently. If she'd wanted them dead, they never would have made it here.

For a long moment, they stood that way, until Aria finally made a small motion with her head and her guards backed away, holstering their weapons. Shepard glanced at Jacob, who put his pistol away, and laid a hand on Grunt's shoulder to restrain him. Grunt shot a glance around, taking in how many people and weapons were around. She could almost read his thoughts, his common sense fighting with the idea of going out in a wave of glorious destruction and bloodshed. Since there was still a part of her that wasn't entirely adverse to that idea herself, she waited until she was certain he wasn't going to cause trouble. He was learning.

One of the batarians was doing some kind of scan on her with his omni tool. "Stand still," he said curtly.

"Certainly." Shepard kept her eyes on Aria, who finally turned to look at her.

Shepard had never actually met Aria T'Loak face to face. During her foray into Omega when she'd been younger, she had been far too insignificant to warrant Aria's attention. Funny, she'd never thought in a million years she would _ever_ be in the position to warrant Aria's attention. Denali had started working for her long after Shepard had left for Earth.

She was gorgeous. Shepard had never met an ugly asari, but even among that beautiful, ageless race, Aria was exceptional. She didn't have a weapon or fancy armor; she didn't need either. She wore power like a cloak, it was in every move she made, every flick of a glance she shot your way. To shorter lived races, she seemed to have ruled Omega from the beginning of time. Shepard didn't have any doubt that she had cultivated that image over many a year, but the fact remained she was able to pull it off with ease.

The batarian stepped back and the two women regarded each other for a long moment, the silence stretching out. Silence was a very good tactic to make your enemies nervous; Shepard knew and utilized that herself. It was rather annoying to have it turned back on her, but she withstood it. Aria was running this show, let her take the lead.

Kasumi, a romantic at heart, thought the picture the two made was fantastically dramatic. The entire world seemed to have narrowed down to those two figures. Everyone else seemed to just fade, as if overwhelmed by their presence.

Aria, finally taking Shepard's measure, spoke at last: "You've been busy. You managed to slip by Moklan when you arrived, it's been a while since I saw that happen."

"Unintended, I assure you, I wasn't trying to sneak anywhere, I was just in a hurry." As with the Illusive Man, Shepard knew she didn't have a prayer of matching Aria's skill in this subtle game of power and posturing, so she figured honesty was the best policy. "I didn't come to cause trouble. I know who rules Omega."

"Rules?" Aria seemed amused, turning and spreading her arms. Also like the Illusive Man, Aria understood the value of a good background. The picture she presented was dramatic, resonating with power to go along with her words: "I _am_ Omega." She looked back to Shepard. "But you need more. Everyone needs more something. And they all come to me. I'm the boss, CEO, queen if you're feeling dramatic. Omega has no titled ruler and only one rule." She sat down in one smooth, graceful movement, the picture of arrogant self possession. "Don't fuck with Aria."

Shepard fought the urge to applaud. "Easy enough to remember."

"If you forget, someone will remind you." She glanced over at one of her batarian bodyguards, who grinned as he spoke: "And then I toss your sorry ass out of the nearest airlock."

"Ah, well, I'll keep that in mind. I already died once in a similar manner, I don't want to repeat the experience. It isn't pleasant," Shepard said calmly.

That discomfited the batarian. In fact, it was the first thing she'd said that seemed to make an impression on everyone around them. Aria merely raised her eyebrows, but Zaeed eyed her curiously and several of Aria's people glanced at each other, not sure how to react to such a bizarre statement, especially with the calm, matter-of-fact tone Shepard had said it.

There was another moment of silence, this one a bit awkward, before Aria calmly gestured to the wide booth that took up the entire alcove. Grunt growled when the batarian shifted so he would be closer to Shepard. She looked over at him and shook her head. "Grunt, treasure, you've been chomping on vorcha all day and it looks like you'll be getting some gang members later on. Patience." Shepard sat, crossing one leg over the other. Aria studied her for a moment. "You didn't come here to cure the plague," she finally said.

Sticking with her 'honesty is the best policy' approach, Shepard shook her head. "I came to…recruit…a few people for a mission." She gestured to Zaeed, who smirked. "In that case, it was Mordin Solus. Curing the plague was a nice bonus, though."

"The Professor? Good choice. Don't let him start talking, though, he never shuts up," Aria said.

Shepard smiled wryly. "I noticed."

"So who else are you after that means your young krogan there will get to snack on gang members?" Aria seemed genuinely curious now that she had established Shepard wasn't a threat.

Shepard considered that a stroke of luck. "I'm trying to track down Archangel."

"You and half of Omega. You looking to recruit him, or do you want him dead too?"

"He's on the list."

"Interesting. You're going to make a lot of enemies teaming up with Archangel."

"What's a few more?"

Aria gave her a slightly condescending smile. "That's assuming you can get to him. He's in a bit of trouble right now."

"So I hear. You don't happen to know where I could find him, do you?"

"The local merc groups are recruiting anyone with a gun to help them take down Archangel."

"The local merc groups?"

"Blue Suns, Eclipse, and Blood Pack, mostly. It's actually impressive, they never band together unless there's a war," Aria said.

"All three of them? Well, that's…annoying." Shepard scowled, genuinely irritated, which seemed to amuse Aria.

She jerked a thumb toward the club. "They're using a private room for recruiting…just over there. I'm sure they'll sign you up."

Well, damn it to hell, couldn't they have waited another day or so? Then she might have taken Archangel off their hands and everyone would have been happy. "Thanks for the tip."

"See if you still feel that way when the mercs figure out you're here to help him."

"Sounds like a good fight, Shepard," Grunt chortled. He bared his teeth in a grin that reminded her so much of Wrex in that moment, it was almost painful.

"Indeed. Sounds like we don't have much time to waste." She rose to her feet.

Aria chuckled. "You've got all the time in the world. Archangel…not so much."

* * *

Garrus crouched and pulled a heavy peace of tarp over Sara Montegue's body. Her face was peaceful in death, though her hair was matted with blood. He laid a hand on top of the tarp for a long moment, closing his eyes. He didn't feel much, either of guilt or sorrow. He didn't have room in him for that at the moment. All he had was a moment or two to cover them all up decently.

It was all he could do.

He turned his head toward the balcony and rose, snatching up his rifle as he looked over. More freelancers. Sheep for the slaughter. Grimly, he brought his omni tool up and set it to record before settling the rifle on his shoulder and sighting down the barrel. There seemed to be a grim symmetry in gunning them down while he recorded his last words.

There was no room in him for mercy anymore, either.

* * *

**AN:** Move your ass, Shepard!


	12. Gang War

"At least there's one kid that's going to walk away from this," Kasumi said as several freelancers ran past them, older than the kid she'd dissuaded…well, she'd broken his gun…from joining the fight against Archangel, but not by much. Bright, eager to get in on the chance to make a name for themselves.

They were fodder.

_Distraction team, my ass,_ Shepard thought with disgust. She could read between the lines, though apparently none of the other idiots signing up could.

The one good thing about acting this part was they were handing out information like candy. Archangel had been able to keep the mercs at bay because his hideout was on the other end of a bridge and he gunned down anyone who tried to come across it. They had an infiltration team that managed to make it across the bridge, but they couldn't get in without being seen. The gangs were hiring the freelancers to throw at him long enough for the infiltration team to sneak up on him.

And the infiltration team only just made it because they had a gunship to distract him before he took it down. Took down a fucking gunship with a sniper rifle. Mission or no mission, she _had_ to meet this guy.

Shepard led the way toward the sound of gunfire ahead, not hurrying, keeping her ears and eyes open. So, they had to get across the bridge and convince Archangel they were on his side, then get him out of there through the organized gangs before they managed to tunnel into the hideout. Simple.

Another nice thing about playing freelance merc was while they were getting annoyed and superior glances, no one was really paying much attention to them. As far as the organized gangs were concerned they were already dead, after all. As long as they acted casual, no one was stopping them from wandering around a bit. She gave only a passing glance at the salarian in an Eclipse uniform who was ranting at an unfortunate subordinate and ignoring them completely. She was more interested in taking stock of the mechs they were prepping. Humanoid LOKI mechs for the most part. She paused, however, when she peered into a side room that housed a big YMIR mech. Oh, that wouldn't do, not at all. She glanced casually over her shoulder and then beckoned to Kasumi before sending the others ahead. "Keep an eye out for me." She made sure no one was watching and ducked into the room.

If she'd had time, she would have tried a mass reprogramming of all the mechs, but she could settle for the big one. She hummed softly as she worked, glancing up occasionally. Kasumi had cloaked herself but Shepard could hear her shuffling around.

She appeared at Shepard's side just as Shepard was closing the mech up again. "Shep, check this out." The grinning thief held out a datapad to her. She took it and scanned the contents, her eyebrows winging up.

_Tarak:__  
__I've spoken to Garm, and he and his men are on board. Assuming this operation is successful, we can count on high morale and extensive buy-in from the men. From the losses we've already taken, possibility exists that we won't have the men needed to continue on to the next objective. It's clear, though that none of our organizations would be ready to move on Aria without the assistance of the other two._  
_Jaroth_

"My, my…the boys are looking to rebel against the queen," Shepard murmured. "Off with her head."

"Bet you Aria would be _extremely _interested to see that," Kasumi said slyly.

"No doubt. Keep that close, would you?" Shepard handed the datapad back to her and Kasumi tucked it away.

They caught up with Zaeed, Jacob, and Grunt only to find they weren't alone. There was a big krogan in red armor talking to Grunt, who didn't look impressed. The other krogan was surrounded by vorcha and Shepard was willing to bet she was looking at the leader of the Blood Pack. She knew his name because Mordin had mentioned him: Garm. He might have intimidated her if she didn't have clear memories of working with Wrex. There were very few krogan who matched Wrex.

Garm didn't appear to be talking to Grunt so much as lecturing him. "You need to know how to live and die without fear." Garm pulled a gun and aimed it at the vorcha nearest to him. He pulled the trigger and the critter's head went flying, hitting the floor with a wet smack and bouncing to a halt not far from her feet. Garm stared at her, smirking. "And how to put that fear in the hearts of your enemies."

Grunt glanced over. "Shepard does all that and more."

_Awww_. Coming from Grunt, that was outright affection. She beamed at him.

Garm raked his gaze over her head to toe. "If you say so."

"Well, I did get out of the habit of randomly shooting a squadmate just to make a point," Shepard commented, kicking the vorcha's head out of the way as she strolled up beside Grunt.

"I, for one, am very grateful for that, Commander," Jacob said dryly.

"Good thing, since you'd probably be the first one she shot," Zaeed said.

Garm just sneered. "I'm stuck here until you freelancers are done playing war. Do me a favor and hurry it up so we can get some real action." He turned away.

"Catch you on the flip side," Shepard said, unable to keep the irony out of her voice.

Kasumi caught the tone and smirked as they walked away. "Getting in should be easy. Getting out should be fun," she said quietly. Jacob gave her an odd look but Shepard couldn't help the smile that curved her lips, understanding Kasumi's amusement perfectly. The more they talked to people they were going to turn on within the next hour, the more she saw the grim humor of the situation.

Grunt wasn't the only one attracting attention from the merc leaders. She had a momentary scare when the leader of the Blue Suns, Tarak, recognized Zaeed. The batarian was surprised he was working for so little, which made Shepard curse inwardly because it was a valid question. Zaeed Massani was one of the highest paid bounty hunters in the galaxy; it made perfect sense to wonder what the hell he was doing among a bunch of (seemingly) two-bit freelance mercs.

She regarded Zaeed thoughtfully for a moment, wondering how much he and Tarak had worked together. She didn't know much about Zaeed beyond what his dossier…and reputation…said. He wasn't really big on chatting, which didn't surprise her. Most bounty hunters weren't the chatting type. You didn't get to be the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy by being forthcoming with what you knew.

Luckily, Tarak seemed far too agitated…she agreed with Zaeed's observation that he was acting like a madman…to be suspicious. He distractedly turned them over to his second-in-command, a human woman named Jentha. She turned out to know a bit more about Archangel than anyone else had previously. She knew he was a turian, for one, although where he'd come from before he'd shown up a few months ago, she didn't know any better than anyone else. "He went after Tarak. In his home! Almost got him," Jentha said, scowling.

_Bet he thought no one could ever touch him there_, Shepard thought, biting back a smirk.

"He's been on edge ever since and making my life a living hell. Second guesses every damn thing I do. Getting the other merc bands to help us shows you just how desperate he is. They're as bad as Archangel," Jentha continued with unconscious arrogance, her lip curling.

Shepard made a noncommittal sound she hoped would be taken as agreement before excusing herself. They had the information they needed. It was time to get this show on the road.

Getting to the batarian in charge of organizing the 'distraction' team required them to hurry across an exposed boulevard. Shepard put her tech armor up before crossing, using the opportunity to glance across the bridge. She caught a glimpse of a figure in blue armor on a balcony in the upper level.

A turian sniper…in blue armor...

The moment of distraction cost her as a bullet plowed into her shoulder, making her shields flicker and knocking her back a step. Shepard swore under her breath, striding to relative safety before he could get off a second shot. _You can't afford that kind of wishful thinking now, idiot, __she bereted herself._

"You're lucky, he usually doesn't miss," one of the freelancers commented.

"He must really be starting to get tired," another crowed, sounding delighted.

Shepard barely managed to resist the urge to slug him, muttering something inaudible as she moved toward the gunship and ignoring Jacob's questioning look. She focused on Cathka, the batarian working on the ship, as he rose, setting a sparking welder aside and turning toward her. "You must be the group Salkie mentioned. Just in time. The infiltration team is just about to give us the signal." He chuckled. "Archangel won't know what hit him."

Shepard focused on the gunship, narrowing her eyes. "Are you going to be covering us with that thing?"

"Hah. Tarak is the only one who flies this thing. Besides, she's not quite ready. That bastard Archangel gave her a beating last time she was out there. A few more tweaks and she'll be as good as new."

_Hell._ Shepard glanced at the gunship again, wondering if she could manage to sabotage it in a timely manner without drawing too much attention. "Are you leading the assault?" she asked, more to distract him than any actual interest.

Cathka snorted. "Tarak doesn't pay me to fight. I just plan the attacks and fix the damn gunship. You freelancers get the privilege of…" He paused as a signal came from a console nearby.

"…dying," Zaeed finished under his breath, meeting Shepard's gaze wryly.

Cathka didn't hear, staring at the console and nodding. "Check. Bravo team, go, go, go!" There were yells from the freelancers as they ran toward the makeshift barricade separating them from the bridge. Cathka leaned back. "Archangel's got quite a surprise waiting for him."

_And so do you, dear heart._ Shepard's eyes drifted to the welder he'd left on the table.

"But that means no more waiting for me." Cathka turned back toward the gunship. "Got to get her back to a hundred percent before Tarak decides he needs her again."

'_Fraid I can't let you do that._ Shepard moved to the table and plucked the welder up. She couldn't sabotage the ship, but she could sabotage the guy working on it. She rammed the welder into his back. Cathka screamed, his body jerking spasmodically. Shepard watched him drop to the ground, wrinkling her nose at the smell of burnt metal and flesh. "Sorry, sugar, nothing personal."

Jacob was watching her warily but Zaeed was grinning. Shepard ignored them both, turning toward the barricade.

"Doesn't look good for Archangel," Zaeed commented.

Kasumi grinned. "We've got nothing better to do. Let's go."

* * *

He couldn't breathe.

That had started when he'd first caught a glimpse of her through the scope. That moment when she'd paused behind the barricade and looked up at him. At first, he felt sure it had to be a hallucination. The stress and exhaustion were finally taking him over.

After the initial rush of shock, the first emotion that had flooded him had been pure, unadulterated rage. His finger had squeezed the trigger on reflex and he'd fired without really aiming, not even noticing if it hit her or not. They knew. That was the next crazily reeling thought that had passed through him. Somehow they had found out who he was and this was the final cruelty, the final taunt. They had sent someone that looked like her to finish him off.

But he wasn't going down, no. Not until he managed to take down this _bitch._ This _imposter._

A tall, pale figure launched itself over the barricade and Garrus was ready. She had some kind of specialized armor, more than one barrier, but he could take her down with a few well placed shots.

Then she moved.

She pulled a pistol in one hand and a submachine gun in the other all in one smooth, impossibly graceful move, not so much walking as gliding. The silent, liquid movement of a predator that didn't need to hurry. It took his breath away, because no one else could move quite like that, could infuse every movement with that casual grace. She looked up toward him again as the group around her spread out almost in a V formation. That, too, was terribly, terribly familiar. It was lucky for him they started taking out the mercs on the bridge, because for a moment he couldn't think, much less fire. "Shepard…"

One of the mercs took a shot at him, which made him stir. He settled his rifle back onto his shoulder and went back to work shooting, keeping an ear out as they disappeared out of his sight. When there was only one merc left, he moved inward toward the top of the stairs, listening. A jolt went through him as he heard the sound of someone trying to cut their way through the door. Before he could react, there was a cry and a thud. Then silence. Garrus listened for a long moment, then cautiously lifted his omni tool and unlocked the door before backing away from the stairs and moving back to the balcony.

He sighted through the scope again, focusing on the remaining merc, but he was listening to the footsteps coming up the stairs behind him.

"Archangel?"

It was her. It _was_ her.

He could only hope they didn't notice his hand shaking as he held up a finger in a silent request, waiting for the merc to move out of cover and giving himself a moment to pull together. The merc finally leaned around the pillar anxiously and was met by a bullet through the brain.

Having no more excuses not to turn around, Garrus rose. He hadn't realized how heavy his limbs had become and ended up having to use his rifle to push himself to his feet. He turned around slowly.

She stood watching him silently, her head cocked to one side. Those long gray eyes took him in, following every movement. She'd had that same look more than two years ago when he'd first joined up with her in Dr. Michel's clinic. Except there was an odd, intense expression on her face now. Perhaps a hint of recognition…

If she was a hallucination, there were worse ways to go crazy.

He took his helmet off and set it aside, sitting down and propping his rifle against a chair, raising his gaze to her again. She was staring at him with wide eyes now.

He managed to keep his voice level as he finally spoke: "Shepard, I thought you were dead." He wanted to demand some kind of proof it was really her, that she was really _there_, but his tongue seemed thick in his mouth and there was a lump in his throat.

They stared at each other for a few moments of humming silence, and then Shepard smiled at him. One of those rare, true smiles of hers that lit up her eyes and everything about her. "What's doing, handsome?"

* * *

Of course it was Garrus. Who else could it be but Garrus?

Swallowing hard, Shepard took another step toward the turian, half convinced he would just fade away in the next few seconds. "Garrus. You okay?"

Garrus was kind enough not to point out what an idiotic question that was. He was clearly _not_ okay. Not by a long shot. He was clearly exhausted and the physical strain was probably nothing compared to the stress on his mind and emotions. "Been better, but it sure is good to see a friendly face. Killing mercs is hard work. Especially on my own."

What he didn't show with body language, Shepard had learned to pick up from his voice. She heard the sorrow beneath those words and remembered one of the gang members in charge had mentioned wiping out a team before cornering Archangel. She drifted closer to him. "What are you doing here, Garrus?"

He looked away. "I got fed up with all the bureaucratic crap on the Citadel. Figured I could do more good on my own."

"So you decided to come here and clear out Omega? You never do anything by halves, do you, handsome?"

Garrus shrugged. "At least it isn't hard to find criminals here. All I have to do is point my gun and shoot."

"And you managed to piss off every merc on Omega along the way."

"It wasn't that easy. I really had to work at it. I'm surprised they teamed up to take me down. They must really hate me." Garrus looked up as Kasumi wandered up beside Shepard. The commander started a bit. For a couple of minutes, she'd completely forgotten there was anyone else in the room. "Ah. Garrus, this is Kasumi Goto." She turned toward the others and introduced them, sweeping a hand toward Garrus. "Gentlemen…and lady….Garrus Vakarian, hero of the Citadel. And Archangel. Where the hell did that come from, by the way?" she asked, looking back at him.

Garrus shifted uncomfortably. "It's just a name the locals gave me for all my good deeds." He coughed, his mandibles flaring with embarrassment. She made a mental note to rag on him a bit about that in revenge for all the times he'd laughed at her for being uncomfortable around fans. "I don't mind it, but please, it's just Garrus to you."

She laid a hand on his knee briefly as she turned toward the balcony. "We're going to get you out of here, Garrus. Although that's not going to be as easy as getting in."

"No, it won't be." He rose and came up beside her. Right where he belonged. She was startled by that thought, pushing it aside. "That bridge has saved my life…funneling all those witless idiots into the scope. But it works both ways. They'll slaughter us if we try to get out that way."

"We can't just sit here and wait for them to take us out," Jacob said, looking from her to Garrus. There was a sharp look in his eyes that made Shepard feel slightly defensive. She could only imagine what he was going to report to Miranda.

"It's not all bad," Garrus said. "This place has held them off so far. And with you here now…" He looked over at her, and then glanced at the others. "I suggest we hold this location, wait for a crack in their defenses, and take our chances. It's not a perfect plan, but it's a plan."

Shepard studied the bridge silently, going over different ideas and discarding each. Garrus was right. They were horribly outnumbered and outgunned. The only thing that took that edge away was the bridge. She nodded slowly. "Sneaky isn't my strong point anyway."

Garrus gave her a tired but genuinely amused look. "Taking out mercs from behind, blowing them up…did they redefine the definition of the term 'sneaky' recently?"

"_I_ redefined it, Garrus." Shepard tossed her head. Garrus laughed, a sound that certainly lifted _her_ spirits and she could only hope it lifted his.

"Glad to see you haven't changed, Shepard." Even as he said it, she saw his eyes travel over her face and what he could see of the rest of her, clearly visible changes that defied those words. He looked away. "Let's see what they're up to." He raised his rifle, looking through the scope. "Hmm…looks like they know their infiltration team failed." He handed her the rifle. "Take a look. Scouts. Eclipse, I think."

"Too bad it's not Blue Suns, I kind of wanted to see Tarak's reaction. I bet he threw things."

Zaeed snorted. "Good guess."

Shepard looked through the scope and frowned. "They're bringing in the damn mechs. More than scouts I think." She took aim at one that hopped over the barrier and blew its head off. "One less now, though."

She handed the rifle back to Garrus, who chuckled. "Indeed. We better get ready. I'll stay up here. I can do a lot of damage from this vantage point."

"We did notice."

"You…you can do what you do best." He looked over at her. "Just like old times, Shepard."

* * *

The first wave of mechs went down with little to no trouble, which was when Eclipse brought out the snipers. That caused a bit more trouble, but between her and Jacob tossing a few of them up in the air and well placed hits from Garrus and Zaeed, they too fell. Kasumi cloaked herself and worked in tandem with her to bring their shields down. Grunt's aim wasn't as good as it could be, he was still learning yet, but what he lacked in experience he made up for with enthusiasm. Not to mention he had a big ass gun, so he didn't exactly have to be precise to blow some of the mercs to pieces. When Jacob pointed out a pair of them trying to sneak a bomb in while surrounded by a group of shielded troops, Shepard merely pointed her omni tool and overloaded the bomb's circuits, causing it to explode while they were still on the bridge. Grunt started laughing uproariously as the survivors rushed about, panicked.

Garrus swore as the babbling salarian Shepard had first seen…she assumed he was the leader…appeared at the barrier and the YMIR mech was lifted over. The salarian motioned and the mech came to life. Garrus raised his rifle and Shepard simply laid two fingers on the barrel, urging him to lower it again. She grinned at him. "Never get so distracted by planning that you leave your mechs unattended."

Kasumi snickered.

The salarian barely had time to register the fact that something was terribly awry before the mech turned and started firing at him and his troops. She'd been afraid once they realized Shepard and her group were traitors, they would go over the mechs and discover the tampering. Obviously, she'd given them far too much credit.

It was actually kind of fun to simply sit back and watch the YMIR and the mercs battle it out, giving it a little help every now and then. When one of the mercs managed to make it past, they simply gunned him or her down. Including the babbling salarian, who was shrieking by that point.

"Bye, Jaroth," Garrus murmured, watching him fall.

"Ah, so that's his name. _Was_ his name," she corrected herself. The mech finally collapsed, but by that time there were so few of them left, cleaning them up took little effort.

"I've been hunting that little bastard for months. He was shipping tainted eezo all over Citadel space." Garrus shook his head.

Shepard moved to the balcony and squinted out across the bridge. "So Blue Suns and Blood Pack left." She frowned in puzzlement. "Look."

Garrus narrowed his eyes. "They've reinforced the other side. Heavily. But they aren't coming over yet. What the hell are they waiting for…?"

As if answering that question, a rumble went through the entire building, making them stumble. Garrus whipped around and Shepard winced. "For someone to tunnel underneath the building, maybe?"

Garrus brought something up on his omni-tool and cursed softly. "They've breached the lower level," he confirmed. "Well, they had to use their brains sometime. You'd better get down there, Shepard. I'll keep the bridge clear."

Amused, Shepard wondered if he realized how easily he slipped into giving orders. That was new. "Right. Grunt, Kasumi, you stay up here and look after Garrus. Zaeed, Jacob, you come with me."

"Aw, but I was looking forward to crawling through the dark creepy basement!" Kasumi said with a notable lack of sincerity.

Grunt shrugged. "As long as I get to kill something."

Shepard patted him on the shoulder as she passed. "That's right, just keep shooting heads off. Or ripping them off. You know, the way you do."

"Shepard, are you sure?" Garrus said, looking concerned. "Who knows what you'll find down there."

"We'll be fine, handsome. Where to?"

Garrus pointed. "Go down a level- the basement door is on the west side of the main room, behind the stairs."

"Don't do anything fun without me." Shepard waved over her shoulder.

"Ah, Shepard, you know the real party can't start without you here," Garrus said with a trace of his old humor.

When Shepard had first passed through the base on the way up, she had taken note of the bullet holes and blood stains on the walls, but had been too focused on getting to him to notice the shapes on the floor. They were scattered everywhere, covered with tarps and blankets and sheets, anything he could find.

His team.

_Oh, God, Garrus. _She felt sick._ I knew something would happen in your life that would flip everything around and make you broaden your view. It happens to all of us. But not this. Never this._

Garrus watched her go. As it had so often since the siege on the base began, his hand rose unconsciously to settle over the spot where, beneath his armor, her St. Jude medal rested.

* * *

"_Goddamn it, Tarak, they can't get in through the tunnels! That bitch sealed up the basement!"_

Kasumi grinned at the gravelly voice over the comm. They were starting to get a little bit worried. Shepard had been gone for a while. Between her and Shepard, they'd managed to hack the comms so they could listen to some of the chatter between the gangs. "She's good."

"You have no idea," Garrus said.

Kasumi raised an eyebrow, but before she could comment, more voices chattered over the comm. They were breaking in, there were just too many of them now to hold back. Garrus clicked his own comm. "Get back up here, Shepard, they're coming in through the doors!"

"_On my way." _

Something heavy hit the door downstairs and a muffled voice roared: "Archangel! We're coming for you, you bastard!"

"Garm," Garrus said grimly.

"Oh, really?" Grunt rumbled, baring his teeth in a grin. He moved down the stairs slowly.

"_He must be pissed off we've taken out so many of his peons," _Shepard said. _"Though one of the krogan managed to knock me around a bit."_

"Shepard?" Garrus said, sounding worried.

"_I'm fine, Garrus. Just hold on."_

Kasumi, standing at the top of the stairs, turned as she saw sparks start to flare down the center of the front doors. "Archangel!"

Garm forced his way through the doors with a mighty and melodramatic roar. "Rip them to shreds!"

Garrus killed the vorcha standing right next to him. Garm's head swung toward him. He snarled. "Watch my back. I'll deal with Archangel."

Grunt bounded down the stairs, standing in the way, punching one fist into his palm and grinning. Garm simply narrowed his eyes. "Get out of the way, kid."

"Why don't you try giving me some lessons like we talked about earlier?" Grunt replied, moving toward him.

Kasumi saw the tell tale shimmer in the air around Garm even before Garrus shouted a warning to Grunt. Too late. Grunt lunged forward with a roar only to be thrown clear off his feet by a wave of biotic power. She actually saw his flesh ripple from the force of it and winced in sympathy. "I think Grunt needs lessons on how to deal with biotics…"

"No offense kid," Garm said arrogantly, looking back up at Garrus. "But this guy has been a pain in my ass for far too long."

A shot echoed from behind the stairs, taking out another vorcha. "You haven't even begun to see what a pain in the ass he can be," Shepard called.

Kasumi couldn't help but laugh. She sounded so _proud._

Garm snarled and his vorcha surged toward Shepard's group. Garm lunged for the stairs but before he could head up, Grunt slammed into him from the side, sending them both flying. Kasumi couldn't help but gape and even Garrus looked startled. She'd seen people disabled for _days_ after being hit by a biotic attack like that.

Blue Suns were starting to pour in through the door now. Garrus started firing again and Kasumi cloaked herself, going to work on shields and anyone stupid enough to turn their back on her. She saw the Blue Suns second-in-command, Jentha, run in. She started waving her hands and shouting orders, only to come face to face with Shepard. Jentha shouted something that was lost over the noise (although Kasumi was fairly certain the word 'bitch' was in there somewhere) and attacked. Shepard drove her back along the wall, the two dodging each other's attacks and lashing out in a deadly dance. Shepard finally threw her into a wall with a biotic attack. Kasumi didn't get a chance to see if she was dead because Garm had gotten away from Grunt and was lunging up the stairs. Garrus opened fire as the krogan lunged for him. Jacob came running up to help him and Kasumi turned to keep any of the other troops from attacking.

Garm was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but he wasn't showing any signs of slowing down. He lunged at Garrus, who dodged, bullet after bullet slamming into the krogan's shields. "Waiting for your vorcha to come and save you again, Garm? Just like last time!"

The krogan punched out with a biotic attack, but Garrus was more canny about biotics than Grunt and dodged it again. Jacob opened fire at the krogan's back and there was a spark in the air as his shields began to fail. Garm went for Garrus again, but Grunt suddenly came crashing up the stairs and slammed into him, bringing a ham sized fist down on the back of his head, throwing him down onto the floor. Garrus stepped up and pressed his rifle to the back of Garm's skull and blew it away. Grunt reared back up with a whoop of victory, sounding exhilarated.

_Well, at least one of us is having a good time._ Kasumi glanced up, breathing a sigh of relief the bastard was finally dead…and caught a glimpse of something moving beyond the balcony. She cried out a warning even as Shepard's voice came over the comm. _"Garrus, there's more Blue Suns showing up!"_

Her words were drowned out by the sound of Tarak's gunship sweeping up to the window. Blue Suns troops leaped into the building and Grunt and Garrus moved forward to meet them. "We've got more getting offloaded up here, watch your back, Shepard! Damn it, I thought I took that thing down!"

The world dissolved into gunfire and shouts again as they faced off with the Blue Suns troops and the few remaining Blood Pack. She heard Shepard shouting something from below, strings of curses and insults. Kasumi dared a look over her shoulder and was relieved to see Shepard and Zaeed were halfway up the stairs, holding the position. It gave them the advantage against the flood of people because they couldn't surround them.

Everything seemed to be going so well. Kasumi was actually starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She was about to shout a suggestion they make their way toward the door and fight their way out through the remaining Blue Suns…then Tarak showed up again.

"ARCHANGEL!"

His voice boomed from the gunship as it dropped back in front of the window again. Kasumi realized with a jolt of alarm that Garrus had been intent on taking down the mercs and had drifted away from the rest of them. He was directly in the gunship's sights. When its guns started firing, he didn't even have a chance to dodge. She heard Jacob shout something to Shepard as Garrus was thrown to the ground by the shots. "YOU THINK YOU CAN SCREW WITH THE BLUE SUNS?"

She tried to move around, trusting her cloak to keep her hidden from Tarak's view. Garrus managed to crawl behind a couch even as the hail of bullets ceased. Kasumi saw the fake out coming and tried to warn Garrus not to fall for it, but it was too late. The gunship rumbled as its missile launcher fired up and Tarak launched one into the base as Garrus lunged for safer ground. "THIS ENDS NOW!" Tarak yelled as the missile caught the turian. The blast threw him clear into the air.

Grunt yelled something at Tarak she couldn't hear right as Shepard came around the corner into the main room. "Kasumi! Jacob! What's…"

She saw Garrus on the floor, blue blood pooling around his still form.

If Kasumi Goto was sure of nothing else in the universe, she was certain of one thing: She never, _never_ wanted to be on the receiving end of the look that passed across Shepard's face in that moment. It was _beyond_ rage. She didn't even have a word to describe it. Shepard's face went completely blank; an icy, malevolent mask. But her eyes burned.

She turned toward the gunship, her tech armor flaring around her, making a silent motion of command. Jacob, a true soldier, responded instantly, opening fire with his rifle on the gunship. Tarak started firing again, trying to wind up another missile, but Shepard had prevented Cathka from fixing it fully. Kasumi could already see the gunship's shields faltering.

Shepard stalked toward the window, biotic power shimmering in the air around her. With a shriek of fury that raised the hairs on Kasumi's neck, the commander tore one of the chairs free of the floor and threw it at the gunship with eerie, terrifying precision just as the shields failed. It smashed into the front of it and Shepard opened fire at the same time. The gunship shuddered in the air, explosions rocking it as it dropped toward the ground. The building shook again as it fell out of sight and a plume of smoke and fire blew upward.

Shepard didn't even see it. She was already dropping down beside Garrus's still form, that icy rage melting into fear. She touched his shoulder. "Garrus…" Her voice had softened in a way Kasumi had never heard before.

Shepard bent over him while the rest of them watched silently, not sure what to say to her. Then Garrus stirred, sucking in a gasping breath. It rattled wetly in his throat. He groped for his rifle and Shepard caught his hand and pulled him over onto his back. Kasumi pulled in a breath when she got a clear look at the smoking ruin that now made up half of the turian's face and neck. "We're getting you out of here, Garrus. Just hold on," Shepard said. She was bleeding herself, Kasumi noted, but she didn't think she noticed it. "Radio Joker," she snapped over her shoulder at Jacob. "Make sure they're ready for us."


	13. Garrus and Shepard

It was a relief to get out of the comm room, leaving Shepard to pace and mutter behind him. Jacob hadn't relished being the one to give Shepard the news but at least she was talking again.

Up until that point, there had been no talking to Shepard. Shepard was completely uninterested in any subject that was not Garrus Vakarian. Miranda had been hoping for something that would spark Shepard, something that would make her a bit more like the woman she used to be, but none of them had anticipated this. For one thing, none of them had known Vakarian was Archangel. Not even the Illusive Man. Jacob was relatively certain of this, because if he had, he would have let it be known somehow, since Omega was where he'd wanted Shepard to head first. And it was painfully obvious that if Shepard had known who Archangel was and that he was in danger, she would have torn the Terminus Systems apart to get to him.

Miranda had gotten her wish big time. Shepard wasn't a spark, she was a goddamn whirlwind. She had been storming from one end of the ship to the other. It wasn't _damaging_ to the crew, exactly…it wasn't like she was biting heads off, she was barely saying anything at all…but this sudden return of the maniac intensity that she was infamous for was a shock to all their senses. With the chaos brought on while bringing Vakarian onto the ship and rumors flying, there was no way anyone could mistake the cause of it, either.

It had been Dr. Chakwas that had finally told her to get a hold of herself, since they wouldn't know anything for a while and Shepard, in her opinion, had become too edgy to live with. Shepard, surprisingly, had taken this advice, turning that mad energy toward Omega instead of the ship. Kasumi had volunteered to go with her to show that datapad to Aria and Jacob had gone with them. The datapad was kind of moot, since all three of the leaders were dead, but Shepard still wanted to hand it over to Aria. If nothing, it meant Aria couldn't get pissed off at them for keeping that information to themselves when she found out about it…and she probably would…later.

Of course, seeing the glances exchanged among Aria's entourage when Shepard had oh- so- casually mentioned Jaroth, Tarak, and Garm were all dead made it all worth it. It was apparent Aria hadn't expected them to come back alive, much less kill off most of the gangs. Not that any of the gangs would be down for long, they probably all had new leaders in place already. But it would be quite a while before they had the morale or means to try and make a move against the Pirate Queen.

On the way back, another asari who Shepard was apparently acquainted with had appeared. Shepard called her Denali, the two speaking quietly for a few minutes. There was a closeness between them that suggested they were friends, but the asari looked slightly disturbed, and Shepard had grown quiet and sober as they returned to the ship.

Miranda had wanted to speak to him, but Jacob had avoided her for the moment. When Chakwas had given him the report on Garrus, he'd actually taken it to Shepard himself rather than face off with Miranda. On the surface, she would want a report on Shepard's reactions, something to give her an idea of how the commander's brain was working. That, Jacob was sure, was simply a means to cover up the fact Miranda…and the Illusive Man…were not happy that a turian had shifted the balance of things on the ship.

* * *

"_I never thought in a million years that I'd be alive while she was dead," Howard said. He was sober this time around, but he didn't look any better for it. He was staring down at the tabletop morosely. He shook his head. "If I was going to lay odds on who would still be around after a goddamned apocalypse, I would have bet on her."_

_Garrus said nothing. He didn't need to; he knew exactly what Howard was talking about._

"_At the very least, it's not fair her father outlasted her. I wish she'd gotten a chance to put that bastard in the ground before she went out," Howard growled. "You probably don't know what I'm talking about but he's a bad one, her father. I don't know how she came from him. Gave her his looks, but Mirette gave her everything inside, believe you me."_

_Garrus nodded. "I know he was behind that slaving ring she killed all those men for. The murders she turned herself in for on Earth."_

_Howard gave him a surprised look. "She told you that?"_

"_Not long after that man from Akuze killed himself. The other survivor. Toombs. She didn't tell me outright, I kind of figured out she had a connection to a man named Benjamin Creed and asked her about it…"_

_Howard chuckled despite himself. "Bet she liked that."_

"_She was calm about it. It came up because I was helping her figure out how Major Baker had found out about him." Howard growled even more at the name. "That was when she told me about her father and I told her about Saleon."_

"_Well, how about that." Howard cocked his head. "That makes you the whopping second person she's been willing to talk to about it. She must have found you very trustworthy, boyo. Usually, that subject is closed behind a door with red tape and alarms and a big sign that says 'KEEP OUT'."_

"_She had no reason not to trust me," Garrus said with some indignation. "I would never have betrayed her."_

_Howard had an odd, thoughtful look on his face. "No, you wouldn't have, would you?"_

Garrus came awake slowly, flinching as bright light pierced his vision. He dimly heard something shuffling off to the side of him and tensed, automatically groping around for his rifle.

"Garrus." A hand gently stilled his, fingers touching his wrist.

He had a moment to register that he knew that voice before his mind cleared and a flood of memories swept through him. He remembered everything, his team, the siege on his base. He remembered swearing inwardly as he realized Tarak was firing up a rocket about two seconds before it hit him.

_Shepard._

He tried to sit up and a hand pressed against his chest, pushing him back. "Garrus, relax, you're safe."

He blinked up at the woman checking him over. "Dr. Chakwas?"

She gave him that quiet smile of hers. "Hello, Garrus. You had us all worried."

He looked around, half expecting to find himself in the infirmary of the Normandy. But other than Dr. Chakwas, he didn't see anything familiar about his surroundings. "Where…?"

"You are on the Normandy SR-2," Dr. Chakwas said, checking his pupils. She nodded approvingly. "You're lucky, there aren't many who can say they survived a hit by a rocket."

That explained why one side of his face was numb. He touched it gingerly and felt a bandage taking up most of it. Chakwas was watching him soberly. She shook her head when he looked at her. "It took surgery and some cybernetics to fix you up, particularly for your hearing."

She had that patented 'I'm glossing over things because there's something bad you don't need to know right now' tone doctors of all species seemed to know. It didn't take much thinking to guess what that might be. "Got a mirror?"

"No." Dr. Chakwas' voice had a note of coolness. "And you don't need one for the moment."

He didn't argue with her. He knew better. Besides, confirming that getting shot down by Tarak's gunship had, in fact, happened meant that the rest of it had happened too. "She was there…" he said softly, looking around as if Shepard would magically appear.

Chakwas didn't need to ask what he meant. "Commander Shepard is alive, Garrus," she confirmed, her voice quiet.

"How?" He breathed it. The shock of it was catching up to him now. Before, he had pushed it back, focusing everything on surviving.

"I've been over everything Cerberus did and I still can't tell you for certain how they managed to bring her back, but they did it."

Another shock was piled on. "Cerberus?"

"Yes. I think it's best that the Commander herself explain that part of it." Chakwas smiled a bit. "You should see her soon. She's been stopping in often enough." The doctor glanced down at her omni-tool as someone messaged her. She rose, looking down at him. "Rest, Garrus. You should make a full recovery, but don't push yourself. I'll be back in a bit."

Garrus watched her go, catching sight of his armor off to one side. As the door shut behind the doctor and silence descended in the infirmary, he sat still for a moment, letting all the new information attempt to settle in his mind. After a few moments, he firmly decided that he wasn't going to be able to rest and would therefore go crazy if he had to sit still and think over all of it. Grunting, the turian pushed himself up. He ached all over, but was able to stand with reasonable steadiness after a moment. He laid a hand on the chestpiece of his armor as he changed back into it. One side of it had a huge chunk torn out, the edges burned and ragged. He imagined that side of his face looked similar and felt a twist in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't do anything about that for the moment, so he decided not to dwell on it.

He got a lot of sideways glances as he passed through the ship, which didn't surprise him. He recognized the distinct black, white, and yellow of Cerberus but the last time he'd seen it, he'd been gunning down the people wearing them, not asking for directions.

The commander, he was told, was in the comm room. Getting there made him more and more disoriented. This ship was the Normandy…yet it wasn't. It was like looking at the old ship in a distorted mirror. It left his surroundings surreal and made him wonder if all of this wasn't some kind of fever dream. Like he was going to wake up and find himself dying back in the base on Omega.

Disturbed by that thought, he latched onto finding Shepard, his world narrowing down to that one beacon that could assure him all this was real.

He finally came upon someone familiar as he came close to where the comm room supposedly was. He heard a woman's voice talking excitedly, something about coordinates Aria had given them. When they came into view, it turned out she was talking to a dark skinned man. He remembered them both: the woman was Kasumi and the man was Jacob.

Kasumi glanced over and straightened. "Hey, it's you!"

"Tough son of a bitch." Jacob sounded surprised. "I didn't think you'd be up yet."

Not quite sure what to say, Garrus looked past them to the door beyond, then looked over at Jacob. "Is she there?"

The human wasn't surprised by the question. He nodded. "Right down the hall."

"Maybe she'll calm down now," Kasumi said, grinning as she stepped aside to let him pass. "When Tarak shot you down, I thought she was going to leap onto that gunship and rip him apart limb from limb!"

Something about the way she said it had Garrus glancing back her curiously. "Shepard has a tendency to take attacks on her crew very personally."

* * *

Shepard was pacing back and forth on the other side of the comm room when he entered, muttering to herself as she moved from one console to the other, snapping something to her omni tool. The scene was so familiar despite the unfamiliar surroundings that Garrus almost smiled. She even had her incredibly stupid VI avatar, the one she'd made personally. Herman, she called it. It was a human figure that seemed to be made up of skintight leather and lots of bushy hair. Every sound was some kind of shriek that was supposed to be music (he'd always had a hard time telling that some of the stuff Shepard listened to was supposed to be music).

She didn't notice him at first, giving him a moment to reorient himself and take her in. She wasn't dressed in a Cerberus uniform…there was probably only so far she was willing to go. She wore loose black pants and a sleeveless red shirt. Her back was half to him and the back of the shirt dipped low enough he could see the top of a tattoo he'd only gotten glimpses of.

"If it's such a popular place, why is it so hard to find information on it?" Shepard muttered, glaring down at the console.

Herman played a riff on the guitar in his hands and bowed.

"I wasn't asking you, asshole."

Garrus shifted enough to make a sound and cleared his throat quietly.

Shepard whipped around, her expression shifting rapidly from annoyance to surprise. She came swiftly around the large table that took up the center of the room. "Garrus! You're up!" She paused, frowning, then moved forward a bit more slowly. "Should you be up?" Her eyes moved across his face, taking in the bandage.

"No one would give me a mirror, how bad is it?" he said, moving into the room.

She cocked her head. "Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there and no one will notice."

That was so very…well, _Shepard _that it startled a laugh out of him. He winced, realizing the painkillers were starting to wear off. "Don't make me laugh. Damn it, my face is barely holding together as it is. Some women find scars attractive. Mind you, most of those women are krogan…"

He was babbling. Now that she was here in front of him, there was so much between them to say it was overwhelming. He didn't even know where to start and Shepard seemed equally at a loss. They looked at each other for a long moment, both absorbing the changes in the other. Those gray eyes still seemed able to pierce right through him and see too much. And she…she had changed too. In fact, the more he looked at her, the more obvious they became. She was paler and thinner than he remembered. Her scars were different. He was shocked to see the one on her neck and shoulder, the one she'd gotten on Akuze, seemed to have faded. It wasn't as prominent and didn't take up as much space. There were barely healed ones on her face and arms; he could clearly see thin networks of tissue coiling across her biceps and upper chest, reminding him disturbingly of wires.

Shepard shifted a bit, crossing her arms in a defensive gesture, making her appear self conscious of the scrutiny, which was not an emotion he could remember seeing in her. The silence stretched out, becoming tense and awkward. Even as she opened her mouth to speak, Garrus was already talking, addressing one of the biggest things on both their minds: "Cerberus, Shepard?"

She flinched, looking away. "It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds."

"Don't be stupid." His voice came out sharper than he'd intended, making her look at him, startled. "Dr. Chakwas said they brought you back. Obviously, it has something to do with the Reapers and probably no one else would help."

She stared at him for a moment, then retrieved a datapad and handed it to him silently. He scanned the information there and felt a quick twist in his gut. The Collectors. Of course.

"The Illusive Man says he thinks the Collectors are connected to the Reapers somehow. He said if the Reapers are afraid of anyone, it's probably me, and since I'm human, he decided to bring me back. Took two years and a lot of credits. They've been taking human colonies. The Collectors, I mean. Apparently taking them alive, which is more disturbing than if they were killing them off. "

Yes, it was. Especially if the Reapers were involved.

"I tried, Garrus." Her voice took on an edge that was almost pleading. "I went to the Council first but they didn't believe me. They think the Reapers are a myth. Even Anderson…" She stopped and shook her head, looking away. Garrus set the datapad aside silently. Obviously he'd struck a nerve. "No one else is willing to look into it. No one else wants to believe the Reapers are real. They'd rather think I'm crazy."

He knew all of it and he wished he wasn't surprised that the Council wouldn't do anything. He'd stood by, helpless, as members of the Citadel and Alliance both trashed her reputation, especially once she had died. He could have been the first to tell her not to waste her time.

"Bringing me back, a good ship, a crew, resources to fight them…" She made a helpless gesture and leaned against the table. "It's a really good bribe, Garrus. But if I'm walking into hell, I'd rather have someone I trust next to me."

It was the way she said it- that mixture of hope and the way she avoided looking at him at the same time -that finally clued him in. Did she really think he was going to just walk away from her now? The Council and Anderson must have done a number on her if her wits were dulled enough she would actually believe that. "You realize this plan has me walking into hell too? Heh, just like old times."

She glanced up at him finally. For a moment, there was a terrible vulnerability in her eyes that made him uncomfortable. Vulnerable was not a word he'd ever associated with her, not even at the worst of times. She really had been afraid he would turn away.

Leave her to fight this battle…fight the _Reapers_…with no one but a bunch of Cerberus shills at her back? Never. Not in a thousand years. "I'm fit for duty whenever you need me, Shepard," he said firmly. Dr. Chakwas would probably argue with that quite vehemently but he thought Shepard needed to hear it. "I'll settle in the main battery and see what I can do with the guns." He half turned. "Well, once I find it…"

"I'll show you." Shepard walked up to him. Something seemed to have settled in her mind. To his relief, that vulnerable moment had passed and she was the Commander again.

As expected, Dr. Chakwas wasn't happy that he was up, but she finally consented to him leaving the infirmary with the strict promise he would check in with her every day. Or she would come looking for him. Since he knew full well what an unpleasant experience that could be, he agreed.

"She joined Cerberus?" Garrus asked as he walked around the battery slowly, exploring a little. He expected to spend a lot of time here.

Shepard was leaning against a wall, watching him. "Her and Joker and a few other Alliance members who spoke out for me. The Illusive Man probably wanted them to make sure there was someone here I wouldn't feel entirely defensive around. There's also Kasumi, Zaeed, and Mordin Solus, who you haven't met yet."

"I've heard of him."

"It's a good crew for the most part."

"But you don't trust all of them." Garrus finally moved to the console. He was impressed despite himself.

"Actually, yes. For as long as this mission lasts, we all want the same thing. Afterwards, well, we'll see. I expect most of them will put Cerberus' interests first and it'll be a matter of seeing how far apart my and the Illusive Man's interests are. Then it might be a problem."

Garrus thought she was underestimating herself in that regard, and probably The Illusive Man was too. When Udina had grounded the Normandy and Shepard stole it to go after Saren, there had been few dissenters among a crew of steadfast Alliance soldiers. After all they'd seen with her, they had been willing to take the risk. There was a reason he'd modeled his own leadership after hers. Even if he didn't have the same success as her...

"There's also people he suggested we recruit. That's how we got Mordin and Kasumi and that lot. We have one other at the moment we're heading out to get as soon as we stock up and refuel. The mess sergeant wants to know what kind of stuff you like, by the way. He asked me to tell you that as soon as you were up. We have dextro stuff, he said he had some on hand already, he figured it would be good to have on a ship run by me."

"Smart man."

She grinned. "But you should still give him a list."

"I'll do that," he said absently, absorbed in figuring out the guns.

"I'll leave you to it, then." She walked up beside him but was quiet for a long time. Garrus started to turn toward her when she finally spoke. "We had to get out of there fast, so we…we couldn't bring the bodies with us. I'm sorry we had to leave them, Garrus."

He went still, his chest tight. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak yet. He felt a wave of guilt flood him that for a while, he hadn't given any of them a thought. Now he was the one avoiding her gaze. He wasn't ready to face this, to talk about it out loud.

Shepard knew him too well. "You don't want to talk about it now, I know. But if you do, I'm here, Garrus." She laid a hand briefly on his shoulder and turned to leave. As she came to the doorway, she glanced back, her eyes narrowing. "By the way…you shot me."

Garrus looked back at her over his shoulder, confused for a moment. Then he remembered that crazed moment when she'd first shown up. Thank the spirits she'd been armored like a mech. "Concussive rounds only," he lied hastily. "Couldn't let the mercs get suspicious."

"Uh huh."

He turned away, glad for the lightening of the mood, making a mockingly dismissive gesture. "Okay, fine, you were moving too slow. I had to hurry you along."

"Well, that will teach me to be slow around you." She chuckled, stepping through the door and letting it close behind her before he could reply.

Garrus laid his hands on the edges of the console and leaned against it for a moment, glad for the quiet left behind in her wake. Eventually, she was going to want to know what happened, and he couldn't see a way to avoid telling her. But for the moment, he was safe, his memories and his shame in his head alone.

He was alive. He was with Shepard. He'd been given a chance to make amends as best he could. For now, that was enough.

_Sidonis._

His hands curled at the console's edges, feeling the first tendrils of rage coiling around his heart. He pulled his visor off, turning it so he could run his fingers over the names carved there.

_Erash, Monteague, Mierin, Grundan Krul, Melanis, Ripper, Sensat, Vortash, Butler, Weaver_

Garrus stared at the final name for a long time, and then searched through the battery's supplies until he found a welding tool. He carefully used it to wipe out that final name. Sidonis didn't deserve to have his name beside the others. Just seeing it next to the others was a stark reminder of the unfairness that he was still alive while the others were dead.

Eventually, he would have to tell Shepard about it…because he would need her help to fix that.


	14. Changed

**AN:** I would like to go on record saying Lin was a female turian mercenary with red tattoos long before I ever knew who Nyreen Kandros was.

* * *

_You'd think the fact I'm made up of more metal than flesh now would mean it's harder for me to get drunk, _Shepard thought grumpily. She managed to roll up onto her knees, bracing a hand against the alley wall as another wave of dizziness overcame her. The new piercings in her earlobes throbbed unmercifully in time with her head. This had only happened when she got that one drink from Afterlife. That batarian bartender must have given her the really bad stuff, the four eyed bastard.

"Shepard?"

Well to _hell_ with him. _Fuck_ him. She'd downed ryncol when she was properly flesh and blood and lived to tell the tale, goddammit. Granted, she had no idea _how_ she'd managed to survive ryncol and she was never, ever, ever going to try it again, but that wasn't the _point_. She wasn't going to be taken down by some jumped up batarian's cheap swill, no fucking way.

"Shepard? Arian? What the _hell_?"

Turians had such nice voices. She'd always thought that. If caught completely off guard, she might be willing to admit there were times Garrus' voice did wonderfully bad things to her libido. She wouldn't say that when he was around even though he was fun to embarrass.

"_Shepard!"_

Rough hands hauled her to her feet. That wasn't Garrus' voice, it was female…and she knew that voice. Shepard blinked blearily up at the figure holding her up, taking in the dark red tattoos over a bronze carapace. "Lin?" She squinted until her face became less blurry. Yep, it was Lin all right. "Oh. Hey, Lin. I'm alive."

"Just barely." The mercenary narrowed dark eyes at her. "I saw you drink a krogan under the table once, what the hell did you drink to get you in _this_ state?"

"Dunno…bastard batarian gave me something…."

"Batarian? In Afterlife?" Lin's voice rose sharply.

"Yeh…"

"Was it Forvan? Shepard?" Lin dragged her fully upright and shoved her against the wall, getting right in her face. "Shepard! Answer me, damn it!"

"Forvan? Yeah, that was him…"

Lin swore and drew back. Before Shepard even realized what she was doing, the turian rammed a fist into the center of her stomach. _Hard._

Shepard slammed back into the wall and bent over, retching, automatically trying to call her biotics, but unable to think straight. Her only clear thought was shock that she could have pissed Lin off that much and then her entire system revolted and she vomited onto the ground. Lin had stepped back so she wasn't splashed and was watching her grimly.

Shepard heaved again until she was certain her stomach itself was just going to flow right out of her mouth. She knelt, panting, her face damp with sweat, and glared up at Lin. Oddly enough, her vision seemed clearer. "You think just because I'm drunk I won't kick your ass for that?"

"You're not drunk, Shepard. You've been poisoned," Lin said.

It took a moment for that to register and Shepard blinked up at her owlishly. "Poisoned?"

"That batarian poisoned your drink. One of my men lost a buddy the same way a few weeks ago."

"What the hell for?"

"You're asking me? Maybe he thinks its fun. Maybe because people let him get away with it." Lin came forward and helped her to her feet again, letting her lean against the wall. "I never thought you would have fallen for that shit…" Her voice softened a bit and Shepard looked up at her. Lin shook her head slowly. "Witch girl…you _are_ alive…"

It had been a long time since she'd heard that nickname; only Denali and Lin ever used it. "Not the way I would have wanted to meet up with you again, Lin, but thanks…" Shepard swallowed hard and rubbed her temples to soothe her spinning head. "It's like I remember all the bad times on Omega without the instincts I had to survive it the first time around. That's not fair." She rubbed her bruised stomach- Lin could probably knock a vorcha's head off with one punch -shakily pushing herself away from the wall.

When she heard a growl at the end of the alley, she had a crazy thought that it was a varren attack. Lin glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. "Damn, Shepard, you couldn't have left him behind?"

Shepard peered around her as Garrus came stalking up to them. She knew it was Garrus- even without the distinct bandage and the damaged armor, she would have known him anywhere –but the way he glared at Lin like he was barely holding himself back from pulling his gun on her was new. Garrus didn't lose his cool in a fight, not ever.

Of course, that had been before he'd watched an entire team he'd pulled together get slaughtered right in front of him. Which she could have prevented if she hadn't been such a fucking coward.

"What did you do to her?" he snarled, moving around Lin.

"I didn't do anything to her," Lin replied coolly. "She had a run in with Forvan."

That shut Garrus up. He looked over at Shepard. "That batarian bartender? Oh, damn, Shepard, I'm sorry. I should have warned you."

"I should have known better than to take a drink on the house from a batarian," Shepard replied. She didn't want him blaming himself for anything else. That thought brought her back to the message she'd received from Nalah Butler and reason she'd sought out a drink in the first place. She pulled her thoughts away quickly. Her limbs felt weak and she would need to see Dr. Chakwas when she got back to the ship, but for the moment she straightened herself up determinedly.

"Humans aren't popular on Omega and so far he hasn't poisoned any other species. That's probably why Aria hasn't bothered to get rid of him. _She_ finds it amusing, you can bet," Lin commented.

"Is that so?" Now that she was semi-recovered, her enhanced system working to purge the toxins out of her system, she was skipping right over pissed off into enraged. She was a half mech freak dragged back from the dead into an unfamiliar universe by an organization she despised and yet they were the only ones she could use to get the job done. She couldn't sleep for nightmares, most of them inspired by this hellhole of a place where you could get gutted and left for dead in the street without anyone so much as giving you a glance. A place that had tainted and almost taken the life of one of her closest friends, and he would never be the same for it. And to top it all off, she'd been stupid enough she'd almost allowed herself to die at the hands of a fucking batarian, the same race that had killed her mother and torn her world apart when she'd been thirteen and had set her on the path here to Omega.

It was a simple thing, really, to decide all of it was Forvan's fault.

"Oh, oh, I know that look," Lin said as Shepard pushed away from the wall and started, somewhat unsteadily, back toward Afterlife. She was eyeing Shepard carefully but didn't sound wary. Her tone was, in fact, edging into eagerness, which put Garrus on edge. He'd crossed paths with Lin more than once during his time on Omega. Shepard had spoken of her on the old Normandy and Garrus had guessed he would not like her. He was right. She'd never been a target because while she certainly exploited other people, and with gusto, her targets were generally either people with money or gang members. As Shepard had mentioned, Lin didn't exploit the weak because she found it more fun to exploit the strong and well funded. She walked a very thin line, but she did _have_ a line, which was more than could be said of the gangs. But Lin reveled in mayhem. He'd seen her orchestrate a fight that took up almost an entire floor of Afterlife. Why? Because she said she'd wanted to see what would happen.

Needless to say, the eager way she loped down the alley behind Shepard didn't settle his nerves. He'd seen that look on Shepard's face before too, but it had been aimed at an enemy.

_How is he not an enemy?_ That cold voice in his head said. _He just tried to _kill_ her._ That thought made anger rise up in him, but it wasn't quite enough to rid him of the stab of unease. Something about all of it was off, had been off ever since he'd woken up. Shepard had changed, but he was hard pressed to describe exactly _how_ she had changed. It was little things she said or gestures she made. It was like hearing a song you knew by heart but there was one off key note somewhere in the background that kept jarring your ears at odd moments.

"I'm getting her back to the ship," he growled as he caught up with them. Shepard was much steadier now, but that didn't make him feel any better. She was striding ahead of them, locked onto Afterlife like a missile.

"I wouldn't advise getting in between her and Forvan right now," Lin said carelessly, her eyes gleaming with malicious amusement that Garrus didn't like at all. He ignored her and moved to try and catch up with Shepard. Lin shook her head. "I'm dead serious, Vakarian. She'll get it out of her system and Afterlife will be somewhat safer, what's the bad part? Forvan deserves it. I'm surprised you didn't take him out yourself."

He didn't have time to reply because they were at Afterlife. Shepard paused long enough to let them catch up and moved through the doors. Aria, perhaps because Shepard had taken the gangs down a peg and alerted her to the conspiracy against her as well, had obviously spoken to her people because no one tried to stop them as Shepard ignored the line and went in through one of the doors. The elcor bouncer didn't even spare her more than a glance before turning to deal with irate people trying to get in.

By the time they caught up with Shepard again, she was at the bar. Forvan was still behind it and even as Garrus watched, the idiot poured a drink and shoved it at Shepard where she was leaning casually on a barstool. "Have a drink. On the house." Garrus caught the smirk in his voice and the way several other patrons looked at each other and rolled their eyes or snickered at the stupid human who didn't have the brains to figure out her danger. If he'd had any thoughts on stopping Shepard, they vanished there and then.

Shepard smiled, propping an elbow on the bar and settling her chin on her hand, pushing the glass back across toward the batarian with her other hand. "Oh, no, in fact why don't you have it?"

Garrus was watching Forvan and saw the minute twitch of angry surprise before he covered it. "No drinking on duty, thanks anyway."

"I insist," Shepard said, her voice dropping into a purr. She lifted a leg and drew a small knife out of a slot in the back of her boot. Not a combat knife; one of the small, thin ones. A stiletto, Garrus recalled. Shepard always kept a couple hidden in her boot or sleeves just in case. He kept a knife or two on him all the time for the exact same reason. You could never have enough weapons. That was so ingrained into the turian mindset it was practically instinct. Shepard started cleaning under her nails with the tip of the blade. Now, Forvan was uneasy, and so were several other patrons. "Come now, if this isn't your particular…ah, _poison_…I'm sure you can find another. Apparently you have several back there, isn't that right?"

She pitched her voice enough even patrons who had not been paying attention were listening now. It was apparent some of them had not been aware of Forvan's habit because some of them were staring at him suspiciously. Shepard ignored them, studying her nails casually and gesturing with the knife. "Drink up, now."

"Look, human…" Forvan started to growl. Garrus saw the way he shifted ever so slightly to make it easier to slide his hand down to the pistol at his belt. He went for his own gun but before either he or the batarian could move, there was a buzz of dark energy and the knife was suddenly hovering mere centimeters away from Forvan's right upper eye. The bartender froze, all four eyes wide. Shepard was leaning against the bar again, and there wasn't a hint of a smile on her face or in her eyes now. "Lin, would you kindly take that pistol off him? He won't be needing it."

Lin chortled and knelt on one of the barstools, stretching an arm out and grabbing the pistol. She handed to Shepard, who pointed it at Forvan. A couple of batarians among the patrons moved forward as if to interfere and Lin flicked a claw at them in warning, shaking her head. Garrus only gave them a glance, moving so he was at Shepard's back, a gun out and at his side, sweeping the crowd with a warning look. Besides the batarians, who backed off, it was obvious no one else was going to come to Forvan's aid. They only had to take one look at Shepard's face to realize even if they got past Garrus, they didn't want to deal with her.

There were always other bartenders.

Shepard laid the gun on the bar long enough to withdraw a cigarette case and light one, still holding the knife without any apparent effort. When Forvan twitched, the knife jerked with him, making him freeze again. She held the cigarette in one hand and picked the pistol back up with the other.

Of the four biotics that had been on the first Normandy, Shepard had been the weakest power-wise. She couldn't do the kinds of things Kaidan could and certainly she wasn't as adept with them as Liara, but she was remarkably precise with her biotics. She couldn't create a singularity but Garrus had seen her flick a knife across a room and bury it in an enemy's chest without laying a finger on it. Garrus didn't have any doubt she could inch that blade in until it took Forvan's eye out.

The only sound around the bar was the pounding of Afterlife's music and the sounds of people on other levels, oblivious to the drama unfolding below. Shepard studied Forvan, blowing out a stream of smoke. She gestured with the cigarette. "All right, then. You don't have to drink. Just decide: top or bottom?"

"What?" Forvan glanced at her, struggling to hide his fear. He shot a desperate glance around but came to the same conclusion Garrus had: no one was going to help him.

"I'm going to take two of your eyes, Forvan," Shepard said, her voice matter-of-fact. "And then maybe I'll heat up the knife and use it to cauterize your eye sockets. Would that make you equivalent to a human?"

The batarian looked at her with horror and she gave him a lazy smile. "Shall I take the top or the bottom ones? I can also take one of each, if you prefer."

For batarians, who marked themselves superior over the rest of the two eyed races of the galaxy, that was an exquisitely cruel choice. Their entire language was built around the eyes, it was what made it so hard for other races to truly deal with batarians, even out here in the Terminus Systems.

"No…" Forvan said, his voice hoarse.

Shepard cocked her head and pushed the poisoned drink toward him. The crowd looked from her to Forvan now, almost as mesmerized as Garrus. Shepard's gray eyes were cold and hard, tunnels into the steel trap of a mind behind them. Razor edged charisma, Garrus thought dimly. That was what Kaidan called it once. It was that sheer, unrelenting force of her personality that drew people to her, made them believe in her even in the craziest of situations…or scared the hell out of enemies trying to face her down.

Forvan moved, lashing out with a hand. What he was trying to do, Garrus didn't know, but it didn't matter. Shepard dropped the cigarette and caught his wrist, yanking him forward. She grabbed the knife out of the air and rammed the fist wrapped around the handle into his throat hard enough he gagged.

Shepard caught his chin as he stumbled back and stabbed the blade into his right upper eye.

Forvan could only let out a thin wail as she carved it out of the socket with such sickening ease, Garrus had a flash of certainty it wasn't the first time she'd done it. It came free with a wet pop, glistening on the end of the blade. She slammed the batarian's head onto the bar with a crack, hurrying him along with another buzz of dark energy, and flicked the eye off the end of the knife to the floor casually. The crowd actually surged back to get away from it and there were more than a few pale faces and wide eyes among them now. Even Lin, who was still standing between her and the crowd in case anyone got it in their heads to interfere, was unnaturally solemn. But she didn't look surprised, which somehow made it worse.

Forvan moaned, blood bubbling past his lips and dribbling down his face from the eye socket. Shepard tapped the knife beneath his left upper eye, and then pushed the glass toward him. This time, he took hold of it and brought it to his mouth almost mechanically, his remaining eyes glassy with shock. It took him some effort to swallow with his damaged throat but he managed it. Probably just as well. If he spilled any, Shepard probably would have simply poured more into his mouth until he swallowed enough to kill him.

It didn't take long. He swayed, swallowing convulsively. More blood spat from his mouth and he collapsed behind the bar, his body starting to quake. Shepard peered over and watched him. From the moment she'd grabbed him, her face and eyes had not changed expression at all and they didn't change now either. She watched him die without a hint of real interest, using a bar napkin to clean her knife off. The crowd let out a breath, almost a sigh. Apparently certain he was dead now, Shepard swung off the bar and onto the floor, leaning down to tuck her knife back into her boot.

The crowd was already starting to scatter. There were a few mutters about how they had to go all the way across the room until they cleaned up the mess and got a new bartender there, but no one made a move against Shepard, shifting to allow her to pass as she walked out. Lin smirked at the bar and followed, strolling out with an air of a woman who was thoroughly satisfied with the night's entertainment.

Garrus followed a bit behind to give himself time to reorganize his thoughts, holstering his pistol, his eyes on Shepard's back. He didn't know this woman. Shepard was hell to piss off, but he would never have marked her as cruel, someone who got enjoyment out of pain.

"Nice to know the Witch hasn't lost her touch," Lin commented.

Shepard glanced back to her and her eyes met Garrus' for a brief moment. Whatever she saw there made the coldness vanish from hers. She visibly flinched and looked away quickly, hunching her shoulders.

"I have to get back to my ship, but I'm glad you're back, Arian. Message me the details when you get the chance, eh? I bet it's a hell of a story."

"You could say that," Shepard muttered. She kept walking, giving a little wave over her shoulder.

For some reason, Lin's tone of voice and the way she nodded irked Garrus, finally making him stir. He glared at Lin as she started to turn away. Before he could speak, she paused and nailed him with a cool, neutral look. "I'll make you a deal, Archangel, you keep your mouth shut and in return, I won't let Shepard in on what your behavior would mean if she was a turian."

For the second time that night, she managed to take him aback with a few words. He felt a flush creep up his neck as what she was implying became clear. Lin snorted and turned away, tossing over her shoulder: "You might actually be her type if you learn to loosen up a little."

* * *

It was a few days before Shepard sought Garrus out again. In truth, he wasn't sorry she didn't speak to him. He was still rocked by the changes in her and wasn't quite sure what to think about it. Shepard seemed more subdued as they left Omega, absorbing herself completely in the details of the mission. They were, he learned, heading to the prison ship known as Purgatory to pick up yet another potential squad mate. Why they were going for someone in a prison like that was a mystery to Garrus until Kasumi Goto had shown him the dossier. A hugely powerful human biotic. In a prison. Well, then.

He glanced over his shoulder as the doors swished open. Shepard moved up to him. "Hey, Garrus. Got a moment?"

He didn't look up, finding himself strangely jumpy at being alone with her. "Can it wait? I'm in the middle of some calibrations." Which was true enough, and a fully legitimate excuse.

"Actually, this is kind of about that."

That got his attention. He finally looked at her. She had moved away and was sitting on a crate, looking up at him, maybe sensing he wanted some distance. She gestured toward the console. "I was going over everything on the ship. It's got good systems, but there's a few things I want upgraded before we take the Collectors on. Including the guns. You think you can look into that for me?"

Now this was something he knew exactly how to deal with. "I'll scout around and see what I can find. Was that what you and Lawson were…uh…discussing?" He'd learned pretty quick that Miranda Lawson was not going to be his favorite person on the ship. Talk about having a stick up your ass.

"You mean arguing. No, she made some noise about funds and such, but between what funds Cerberus has for us and what we can pull in on the side, we should be able to upgrade everything I want upgraded without too much trouble."

"You never had a problem doing it before."

"Yeah, I wonder if Saren ever realized how much he funded our ship and munitions upgrades back on the old Normandy between foraging and stealing from his men and his bases."

"Stealing from your enemies is a time honored tradition across species, Commander. Just ask Tarak." He didn't think about it, wincing when he brought it up, his hand moving to brush the edge of his bandage. With the doses of antibiotics and painkillers Dr. Chakwas was giving him, the pain was reduced to a low throb most of the time, but it was still enough to be a bad reminder.

"Used the gangs' own money to fund attacks on them, did you?" Shepard said.

"We weren't out to get rich, but yes."

"How delightful." She meant it too, the tone of her voice approving.

Garrus relaxed just a bit. _This_ was his commander. If she wasn't going to bring up what had happened on Omega, he was more than willing to leave it silent between them for the moment. Maybe forever.

"Why'd you go to that hellhole, Garrus?" She was looking up at him again, her expression serious now.

He looked over at her. "Because it's filled with criminals nobody else can touch, and no red tape to slow me down. People needed something to believe in. Someone to stand up to the local thugs."

"Obviously enough people to form a squad agreed with you."

"You know how it works, Shepard. Show people you can get the job done and they join up. You know Omega. It's full of thugs kicking the helpless. I formed my team to kick back." He gripped the side of the console, staring down at it, unable to look at her while he was talking about them. But once he'd started, he didn't seem able to stop. Shepard did that to him. She always had. He'd spoken more freely to her than he had with anyone he'd ever known. "Twelve of us, including me. Former military operatives. C-sec agents. Mercs who wanted to atone. Security consultants tired of playing by the rules. Had a salarian explosives expert I'm pretty sure was a former Special Tasks Group agent."

He'd glanced over at her and so caught the way she stared at him, blinking for a moment, an odd look on her face. "STG like Mordin and those guys…on Virmire. That lieutenant that rigged the bomb…"

She sounded so confused. "He was a captain, actually. Captain Kirrahe."

"Yes." Shepard rubbed her temples, closing her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. "I…I'm sorry, Garrus. There's still these little chunks of memory here and there that are missing until someone brings it up. So, you didn't have just turians on the squad, I take it?" She spoke in a rush as if to cut off any questions.

He studied her, troubled, but let it go. "Yes. We were a mixed group. My tech expert was a batarian, believe it or not. Not the friendliest guy, but he could hack any system ever built."

"You guys started out hitting their supply lines and deliveries? In between going after the leaders in their homes, of course."

"That was later when we had better resources. First we got under their skin, disrupted activities and hit shipments. Made them angry."

"I did notice."

"Well, yes, all three gangs banded together to take me down. My manager at C-sec would be proud."

"I know I was."

That managed to get a bit of a smile from him. "No civilian casualties. That was the rule. You should have seen some of those gang members, Shepard. I would have whacked a squad member upside the head for charging blindly into a kill zone the way some of them did. So would you. And they did it over and over. Crossfire and snipers, clean and surgical. They never stood a chance. It was giving the violence back to the gangs in a way they'd thought no one else would be able to and the fact it was just a group of twelve pissed the gangs off even more. They were good men. I gave them hope." He clung to that truth, even through the pain.

"Considering how little of that there is in Omega, that's something of a miracle in and of itself," Shepard said quietly.

He appreciated that, even if he didn't deserve it. "But now they're dead."

She leaned back against the wall, not asking directly but waiting to see if he was going to tell her. Since everything else was out, he figured he might as well. "It was my own damn fault. One of my people betrayed me. A turian named Sidonis. He drew me away before the mercs attacked, asked for my help on a job, but when I got there, I couldn't find him. By the time I got back to the hideout, the mercs had killed all but two of my squad. And they didn't last long."

Her breath came out in a rush. "Ah, Garrus…"

His hands tightened into fists. "Everyone except me is dead because of him. And because I didn't see it coming." That list of names, in his head and carved into his visor. He still hadn't managed to pick up Sidonis' trail. But he would.

He realized Shepard had fallen silent and turned to look at her. Her eyes were closed, her brows drawn together in an expression Garrus would have called pain. She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. When she finally spoke, her voice was low: "I could have come for you sooner. I should have come for you sooner. We were out there for weeks doing other stuff because I wasn't ready to go back there. I didn't want to face Omega again."

He knew that berating tone she was aiming at herself all too well, he'd been using it enough lately. There was a tremor in her voice he'd never heard before. "Shepard…"

"If we were there, we could have helped you. I'm so sorry, Garrus."

"It's not your fault, Shepard. Although you probably would have taken one look at Sidonis and known he was a traitor, since I sure as hell didn't figure it out."

"If you're to blame for it, so am I." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "And you are blaming yourself, Vakarian. Not just for Sidonis, for all of it. I know you too well." Her gaze softened. She looked tired and haunted, another feeling he could understand perfectly. "You couldn't have known."

"I should have."

"Garrus." She rose to her feet, moving forward until she was only a couple feet away. "There is no way you could have known."

Her tone was firm, unyielding. Absolutely certain. Once, he would have believed her without a shadow of a doubt. But so much, including both of them, had changed. He didn't believe it, no matter how much he wanted to. When that call from Sidonis had come, he hadn't doubted for a second it was genuine. He hadn't had a clue right up until that horrible moment when he figured out what must have happened that Sidonis was capable of betraying them like that. He couldn't believe there had been no sign he could have picked up on. Maybe she might have been able to help if she'd gotten there sooner, but that didn't change the fact it was his negligence that allowed it to happen in the first place.

He started to turn away and Shepard caught his arm gently. "Shattered, Garrus. That's what that pain is. It doesn't let you think clearly. Something like this breaks you apart. You pull yourself back together eventually, but you're never quite the same. Never quite…whole. But you'll live with it. And you'll see."

That was the most melodramatic thing he'd ever heard her say and it fit so perfectly with how he felt, it shook him. He met her gaze for the first time since they'd come back to the ship. "And no place in the galaxy breaks you better than Omega," she added.

He had to step back. Not because he didn't understand her, but because he understood her entirely too well in that moment. There was an entire history in her eyes, her voice. The rage, the pain, it echoed from her to him and back again, resonating.

Just thinking about Sidonis gave him a focus for all of that in him and in that moment, he understood perfectly why she had focused on Forvan.

He pulled free of her grasp gently and turned back to the console. "Thanks for coming by, Shepard. I've got some things to take care of."

Shepard let him go. "Just think about it. Please?"

Garrus nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He wasn't sure if he was more relieved or disappointed when she left without another word.


	15. Prison Break

Purgatory was wreaking havoc on her hearing, amplifying certain sounds even worse than it had on the Citadel at times. Shepard wasn't sure why, couldn't think of a rational explanation other than 'everything about Purgatory sucks'. It was full of the worst criminals around who seemed to be moonlighting as punching bags for the people who guarded them. It made her own short stint in prison seem like a vacation.

It was rather unfair that they had finally left Omega behind only to end up on a ship that resembled it to an eerie degree.

She rubbed the side of her head, gazing about thoughtfully as they moved toward the maximum security ward. The warden, Kuril, had given them specific instructions on how to get there before disappearing to wait for Cerberus' credits to come through. "Garrus?"

"Yes, Commander?"

She kept her voice pitched low and her expression pleasant. "I do believe that man is planning to fuck us over."

"You too?"

"Bare-faced."

"You remembered," Garrus said with a hint of amusement. Turians with no markings, like Kuril- and Saren for that matter -were often regarded with suspicion. The term 'bare-faced', as a matter of fact, was slang among turians to describe someone untrustworthy or sly. His amusement faded and he moved so he could speak to her without being overheard. "What do you want to do?"

"Kill the bastard," Grunt volunteered from behind them.

"Oh, we probably will, but let's see if we can't get a hold of Jack first."

Shepard had fully intended to leave Purgatory in the same state as she had left it, she really had. But once the Warden came over the intercom and (to she and Garrus' complete lack of surprise) commended them all for being terribly valuable, far too valuable to let go, things just kind of went downhill from there.

To be perfectly fair, Shepard wasn't the one that started blowing things up this time around. That was all Jack. True, Shepard had been the one that overrode security and let Jack out of cryostasis- along with every other convict in the cellblock but she didn't consider that entirely her fault because what kind of a moron programmed the security that way anyway- but it wasn't like she _made_ the adorable little nutcase go crazy and start tearing through the prison.

Grunt hooted with delight as the top half of one of the YMIR mechs that had pulled the cryopod up slammed against the observation window hard enough to leave it wedged halfway through the window in a spiderweb of cracks. Shepard regarded it for a long moment, bemused, and activated her tech armor. "Well, at least she left us a nice swatch of destruction to follow."

Garrus just sighed.

While Shepard didn't approve of beating up prisoners for the hell of it, had even put a stop to a beating on the way up, she couldn't find it in her heart to get riled up by the fact Warden Kuril was selling off prisoners on the side. Trying to sell her and her squad, on the other hand, she had a problem with. Big time. To top it all off, when they came across him, he had the fucking nerve to be behind a shield where she couldn't shoot him. In Shepard's rules of order, that was cheating. Scowling, Shepard dropped behind a crate and scanned the room. Kuril was shouting something about regaining Jack and how all of it was for the good of the galaxy or something but she wasn't really paying attention. The amount of gunfire echoing through the prison as they'd fought guard and prisoner alike were echoing through her skull and she had the throbbing beginnings of a massive headache. This would not do. She'd get it looked at even if it meant spending a night or two in the medbay, which she detested. At this rate, every time she came back from a fight she was going to be crippled by a migraine the same way poor Kaidan had been when he overused his biotics back in the day.

Garrus, crouched beside her, nudged her with his elbow and nodded toward arcs of energy coming from several generators around the room, obviously powering the damend shield. She glanced over as several of Kuril's mercs spotted them. "Grunt? If you please."

The krogan grinned and rushed to meet the oncoming mercs, who made the mistake of hesitating for a split second they couldn't afford before the young krogan crashed down on them. Garrus rose and moved around the crates, unloading on one of the generators while Shepard used biotics to take down the other two. It was, perhaps, not as impressive a display of biotic power as Jack's rampage through the prison, but it got the job done. It also didn't do her headache any good.

She motioned for Garrus to flank Kuril. He was looking at the other turian with a fixed intensity that did not bode well for the warden. Maybe he was still feeling a bit of aggression toward the Blue Suns, which he certainly couldn't be faulted for. Kuril was yelling something again, focused on her and Garrus, which was perfect since he didn't see Grunt bounding up to join them until he started firing.

He actually flipped over the rail and fell off the platform he'd been standing on when he died. Shepard thought that was nicely dramatic.

* * *

Jack had reached the airlock by the time they caught up with her. She was glaring out through the windows at the Normandy and…snarling was the best word Shepard could think of to describe it. She noted coolly that Jack's obviously volatile temper also distracted her because she didn't show any sign of noticing the guard sneaking up on her until Shepard gunned him down.

Jack spun toward them and Shepard got a good look at her for the first time. She blinked, startled. Hell, she was just a _kid_. If she was old enough to get a drink legally, it couldn't have been by many years. Shepard also noted that the girl was sheathed in tattoos bared proudly for everyone's eyes by a leather harness of some sort that covered the bare essentials and little else. She had to wonder if it chafed.

Jack took a step back, eyes narrowed. "What the hell do you want?"

A series of replies passed through Shepard's head before an explosion somewhere in the complex informed her that it probably wasn't a good idea to say any of them. "To get out of here, care to tag along?"

Jack snorted. "Shit, you sound like a pussy."

_Arrogant kid with superpowers, oh, joy of joys, _Shepard thought, suppressing a sigh.

"I'm not going anywhere with you. You're Cerberus," Jack continued. Shepard managed not to flinch at that, aware there was nothing she could say that would convince Jack otherwise. She uttered the name with so much hatred echoing in her voice Shepard made a mental note to ask Miranda exactly why in the hell that might be and why she hadn't been told about it. "You show up in a Cerberus frigate to take me somewhere. You think I'm stupid?"

"Oh, no." Shepard's voice was quiet. "No, indeed, my dear. I have a distinct feeling assuming you're stupid is a mistake no one gets to make twice." Another explosion rocked the ship. "But the fact remains that this ship is going down in flames and mine is not. Incidentally, we came looking for you because we could use your help."

"Shoot her and patch her up on the ship, Shepard," Grunt rumbled from behind her.

Jack's eyes flashed. "I'd like to see you try."

"Grunt, that's no way to start a business relationship," Shepard said at the same time.

Jack's eyes flicked to Shepard's for a moment. There was arrogance, yes, and it was quite clear Jack wasn't used to backing down. Even knowing she had little options besides going with Shepard, she wasn't ready to give in. Not bravado, either, Shepard thought, fascinated despite herself. She had the feeling Jack would literally rather die than give in, particularly to someone from Cerberus. That…was very interesting.

Sly calculation flashed across the younger woman's face. "Look, you want me to come with you, make it worth my while."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I bet your ship's got lots of Cerberus databases. I want to look at those files. See what Cerberus has got on me," Jack said. "You want me on your team, let me go through those databases."

Oh, Miranda wasn't going to like that at _all_. "Deal," Shepard said without missing a beat.

The easy agreement seemed to startle Jack for a moment before she hid it. "You better be straight with me."

"As straight as I am with anybody."

Garrus made a small noise, almost a snicker, behind her. Jack eyed her suspiciously for a moment. Another explosion shook the ship, this one sending a rumble through it that rattled the walls and seemed to roll beneath their feet. Jack turned away. "Well, what the hell are we standing around for?"

* * *

Shepard had taken Jack to the comm room to get the files she wanted pretty much right after they'd gotten on the ship. Miranda, using that bloody annoying sixth sense of hers, was waiting for them there.

There was, Shepard thought as Miranda studied Jack with the same expression she did with her other subordinates on the ship, a limit to Miranda's leadership abilities. She was a good one, of that Shepard had no doubt. She'd observed enough to know only the best of the best in Cerberus answered directly to the Illusive Man, so the woman was no slouch. But she treated everyone exactly the same way, which was fine in a military setting or a paramilitary setting like Cerberus, but it wasn't going to work with the team they were pulling together with this mission. Shepard had figured that one out the moment she'd flipped through the dossiers. Miranda, it seemed, wasn't picking up on it quite so fast.

"Welcome to the Normandy, Jack. I'm Miranda, Shepard's second-in-command. On this ship, we follow orders."

That, for instance, was exactly the wrong way to introduce herself to Jack.

Jack looked bored. "Tell the Cerberus cheerleader to back off, Shepard. I'm here because of our deal."

Shepard moved to one of the consoles.

"What deal?" Miranda turned narrowed eyes to Shepard.

"It seems Jack here has a history with Cerberus." Shepard watched Miranda carefully for a sign of reaction. She thought she saw something in Miranda's expression but wasn't sure. "Her price was access to the system and its databases."

Miranda's eyes widened with outrage. "Shepard, you don't have that kind of authorization!"

Shepard proved her wrong a moment later as she motioned for Jack to take a look at the console, setting it up so she could access it. Shepard shrugged. "If she doesn't get it straight from the system, she'll probably get to it through Kasumi." Who probably had a lot more on Cerberus than the databases on the ship, though Shepard kept that to herself.

Jack smirked at Miranda. "Hear that, precious? We're going to be friends. You, me, and every embarrassing little secret." Her expression hardened as she looked over at Shepard. "I'll be reading down in the hold or somewhere near the bottom. I don't like a lot of through traffic." She headed for the door. "Keep your people off me. Better that way."

Shepard ignored Miranda's glare and chuckled helplessly as she rubbed her temples to ease her headache. "You're going to be a pain in the ass, Jack."

* * *

Garrus had never been up to Shepard's personal quarters, which took up the top part of the ship. He wasn't surprised as he stepped off the elevator to see the door was open, though he paused when he noted that the lights were off. The lights were above her desk, various blinking lights here and there from different machinery, and a blue glow cast by two odd square tanks of water embedded in the walls. Garrus paused at the top of the steps leading down from the office to the room, studying them in puzzlement.

"Fish tank." Shepard's voice startled him. She was seated on a curved couch along the wall directly across from the tanks, her face and the lower half of her body shadowed.

Garrus looked from her to the tanks in the wall. "No fish."

"I know. I don't like fish. They're creepy. I like watching the water though. Maybe I'll get little mechanical spinny things that go up and down instead, just to make use of the thing."

Garrus had no idea what she was talking about, so he let it go, moving until he could actually see her, noting with concern how tired she looked. She indicated the couch beside her in a silent invitation to sit. "Like back in my apartment on the Citadel. I don't have any dextro liquor on me at the moment, sorry," she said wryly.

"Or drawings on the walls," Garrus said, glancing around. That was something that had caught his attention immediately. Both her office and her apartment had sketches on the walls of the dreams she'd had from the Prothean beacon. Ashley Williams had never understood why she wanted those images there, which Garrus in turn had never understood, as it seemed obvious to him. So she wouldn't lose sight of what they were really fighting for…and against. He found the bare walls slightly disturbing.

Shepard was silent for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was pained. "I tried to do some sketches, but it wouldn't come to me. I can remember the basics, but it was like I couldn't transfer it to the paper."

That shook Garrus in a way nothing she'd spoken of had before, because those little sketches she did seemed such an intricate part of his memories of her. Not just the Reaper ones, but the little ones she would do during downtime. He vividly recalled catching her drawing a little doodle of then-Ambassador Udina in an outfit he would have been most upset to see himself in, even on paper.

She sighed and waved a hand. "Well, I'll keep at it. Hopefully it'll improve faster than my gunwork. Sorry, Garrus, I lapsed into crazy again for a second."

"For a second?"

She gave him a dry look, though there was genuine humor in her eyes. "Did you come up here to question my sanity or did you need something, Vakarian?"

Actually, he'd come up to give her back her St. Jude medal, but found himself reluctant to part with it. Each time he'd resolved to return it, he'd backed out at the last minute and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why. It was like it had been a lifeline for him, he wasn't sure if he could deal with letting it go. Instead, he found himself saying: "This is an…interesting group."

"Two Cerberus employees, a bounty hunter, a thief, a tank bred krogan, a crazy biotic, and a former STG member. Who, I found out recently, led a team of salarians to Tuchanka to implant a new version of the genophage when they discovered the krogan were overcoming the original one naturally."

Garrus stared at her. Shepard nodded. "I'm going to just sit back and hope Grunt never gets a hold of that little tidbit of information. He dislikes Mordin enough just on general principle." She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. "And you, of course. So, yes, interesting is a word for it. I looked for you guys when I first woke up. All of you. Found Tali but she wasn't interested in joining up again. Not with Cerberus. I have no idea where Kaidan is, Wrex is probably ruling Tuchanka with an iron fist, and Liara…I don't know. She's an information broker."

"I knew she'd headed to Ilium, I didn't know she'd become an information broker."

"There's still Chakwas. And Joker." She twisted her fingers together, looking down at them. "Howard is dead."

Garrus couldn't keep the sadness out of his voice. "I know." This time around, the flash of vulnerability from her didn't discomfit him. It brought into perspective what it must have been like to suddenly wake up and find everything she'd known gone or changed. He finally reached into the hidden pocket in his armor and pulled her St. Jude medal out, holding it out to her. It was all he could do.

She looked at it for a moment, her brow furrowed in puzzlement. Then her eyes widened in shock as she took hold of it and flipped it over to read the inscription on the back. "This…Garrus, how?"

"An old man claimed he got it from a group auctioning off a bunch of your stuff. How they got it, I have no idea, Shepard. I'm sorry. I tried to find out, but I got nowhere."

"And you kept it," she murmured with wonder.

"The patron saint of lost causes seemed like he'd be a fitting companion. Especially in those last hours." Before she'd shown up. It did seem like a miracle worthy of a saint now that he thought about it.

Shepard stared at the medal for a long time. To his shock, she pressed it back into his hand. "Well, if he kept you alive under those circumstances, here's hoping he can keep you alive from now on too."

"Shepard, I can't…"

She folded his fingers around the medal, raising her eyes to meet his. "I need you, Garrus. More than any memory, I need you alive." Her lips curved into a crooked smile when he kept a hold of the medal. "It didn't do so hot a job keeping me alive the first time around, let's see if it does a better job for you."


End file.
